The recent Supreme Court of India’s judgments (please click here and here) related to ensuring food security of the migrant and unorganised sector workers through the provision of dry ration, running of community kitchens and proper implementation of the 'One Nation One Ration Card' scheme should come as no surprise to us. A recent review of some of the robust studies, which relied on multi-state surveys (or reference surveys), having...

The rise in COVID-19 daily new cases and daily new deaths compelled many state governments to impose local level lockdowns during April-May 2021. As of 20th April, 2021, partial lockdowns were noticed in 10 states across the country and complete lockdown was imposed in Delhi. As of 8th May, 2021, nearly the entire country was under complete lockdown as a result of either partial lockdowns and night curfews or complete...

-Counterview.net A civil society statement, prepared for endorsement from workers’ organisations and concerned citizens by senior economists Amit Basole, Babu Mathews, Gautam Bhan, Jean Dreze, Rajendran Narayan and Ravi Srivastava after several rounds of discussion with trade unions, lawyers and grassroots organisation, has insisted that the Government of India come up with a national relief and recovery package immediately. “Without the direct support of such a package, simply unlocking the economy will...

-Moneycontrol.com Jean Dreze, the Belgian-born hunger economics expert, on the devastation of Covid, what plagues MNREGA, central government’s relief measures, stimulus packages, vaccination drive and more. The big lesson from the havoc wrought by Covid-19 is that India must abandon the “fragmented” US model of healthcare, which is a colossal failure, according to developmental economist Jean Dreze. A Belgian-born hunger economics expert who has co-authored books with Nobel laureates Amartya Sen and...

-IndiaSpend.com The government has said that the economic impact from the second Covid-19 wave will be less than that of the first. But economists point to signs of a growing rural economic crisis, and call for urgent relief measures to ward off long-term damage. Siolim, Goa: Ramesh Ram, 31, is listed as a textile industry staff worker in the administration's database of migrant workers in south west Bihar's Kaimur district. But for...