-India Spend/ Scroll.in Reservations are not the answer to every social and economic problem. More needs to be done to provide safety nets to vulnerable groups. About 10 crore to 12 crore Indians lost their jobs in the immediate aftermath of the countrywide lockdown to contain the spread of Covid-19, IndiaSpend reported in April. But the lockdown has impacted the disadvantaged caste groups with a far greater magnitude than the upper castes, found...

-Outlook India While nationwide lockdown is unavoidable and is a wise decision to contain the spread of the virus, there is a need to address the possibility of an unintended baby boom among poor and vulnerable groups. With most countries following nationwide lockdown or stay at home orders due to the novel coronavirus outbreak, there has been a debate on a possible unintended baby boom across the world. Although many demographers from...

Most reports and studies by official agencies, international think tanks and private entities indicate the cataclysmic impact of the coronavirus pandemic on the economy and society. They anticipate that lockdowns imposed by various countries across the globe to reduce the exponential diffusion of COVID-19 (i.e. for flattening the curve by social distancing and quarantines) would adversely affect economic growth and disrupt supply chains in most sectors, on top of causing...

-Down to Earth Pronab Sen, former chief statistician of India and current programme director of the International Growth Centre’s India Programme, speaks to Kundan Pandey about how recent government policies have crippled the income of the poor and slowed the economy * Kundan Pandey: Is there low demand in the economy? Pronab Sen: The demand is not low. The crisis is that the demand is not growing. For a long time, people...

Almost one in every five suicides in the world is committed by self-poisoning with pesticide, which mostly occur in rural, agricultural areas of low- and middle-income countries (LMICs), states a new publication entitled 'Preventing Suicide: A resource for pesticide registrars and regulators'. Published jointly by the World Health Organization (WHO) and the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO), the booklet says that the adoption of green revolution technology...