-The Indian Express What is disturbing is that in the middle of the current crisis some are now calling for a massive downsizing of the PDS and a shift to Cash transfers in place of foodgrains. The Public Distribution System has played an important role in providing relief to people in the aftermath of the national lockdown. With COVID-19 cases increasing and the economy continuing to be in a downturn, some corrective...
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Mitigating malnutrition -Dr. Pavitra Mohan and Dr Sanjana Brahmawar Mohan
-IDROnline.org In response to the food crisis created by the lockdown, here’s what anganwadis can do to ensure that children stay nourished in times of COVID-19 and beyond. Two-year old Rameela* lives in Nayaghar, 100 km from Udaipur and 35 km from the nearest town. For nearly three months now, Rameela has received a tiffin every morning, filled with sattu (a porridge made from cereals, pulses, sugar, and oil) and khichdi (a...
More »Rs 150,000 crore plus: the govt stimulus for rural areas post lockdown -Harish Damodaran
-The Indian Express That’s the actual liquidity pumped into rural areas by government post lockdown – through grain procurement, PM-Kisan and MGNREGA wages. There are many parallels one can draw between the novel coronavirus-induced lockdown (gharbandi) and demonetisation (notebandi), in terms of their impact on India’s farm economy. Both resulted in the same thing – demand destruction – albeit through different routes. Notebandi caused a haemorrhaging of liquidity from the predominantly Cash-based farm...
More »Why Cash Transfers Cannot Replace Structural Reforms In Agriculture -Padmini Ramesh
-IndiaSpend.com New Delhi: With the launch of the Rajiv Gandhi Kisan Nyay Yojana (RGKNY) on May 21, 2020, Chhattisgarh became the sixth Indian state in two years to initiate a direct Cash transfer scheme for farmers. The scheme aims to supplement the income of the state’s 1.9 million farmers by Rs 10,000-Rs 13,000 per acre of land owned. Cash transfers for COVID-19 relief and stimulus are also gaining salience, with the Centre...
More »Lockdown further impoverishes those who were living on the edges of existence even during normal times, finds a new report
A recent survey that was conducted through telephonic interviews among 1,405 respondents across the states of Delhi-NCR, Uttar Pradesh, Bihar, Haryana, Himachal Pradesh, Assam, Rajasthan and Jharkhand reveals the precarious conditions of workers nearly 45 days after the announcement of COVID-19 lockdown. The report entitled Labouring Lives: Hunger, Precarity and Despair amid Lockdown tries to understand the extent (and depth) of job loss and hunger 45 days after the lockdown. Hunger and...
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