-The Hindu As India emerges from the lockdown, labour market policy has to reverse the pandemic’s gender-differentiated impact The COVID-19 pandemic has had a huge impact on women’s work, but as official statistics do not capture women’s work adequately and accurately, little attention has been paid to the consequences of the pandemic for women workers and to the design of specific policies and programmes to assist them. A survey by the Azim Premji...

-Down to Earth Keonjhar district will introduce ragi for pre-school meals through DMF funds from July Locally cultivated ragi will be part of the Integrated Child Development Services (ICDS) scheme for the first time in Odisha, with Keonjhar district introducing it as part of the pre-school meal from July 2020 onwards. Additionally, 14 districts — a part of the state’s Millet Mission — will provide ragi through the public distribution system (PDS)...

-Review of Agrarian Studies, Vol. 10, No. 1, January-June, 2020 This note analyses the impact of the lockdown – which brought almost all economic and public activity in India to a halt – on a select group of villages based on a rapid assessment survey conducted by the Foundation for Agrarian Studies (FAS) in April 2020. The survey was conducted through telephone interviews of 52 informants from 21 villages across 10...

-The Indian Express If done well, One Nation, One Ration Card, could lay the foundation of a truly national and portable benefits system that includes other welfare programmes like LPG subsidy and social pensions. The economic crisis precipitated by COVID-19 has focussed the country’s attention on inter-state migrants. Millions of Indians in this diverse, complex group have crossed state borders in search of better economic opportunities. The crisis, however, has highlighted their...

-The Hindu Instead of embracing the welfare state path, the BJP government is encouraging greater privatisation The novel coronavirus is a global threat, but the pandemic has had an uneven impact across countries and within countries. Historically, social inequality has always been extreme in India. However, the lockdown has sharpened the edges of inequality even further, especially because of the way it has been implemented. Many countries have imposed lockdowns but not...