The COVID-19 pandemic continues to have multiple impacts on our lives. Existing challenges have been exacerbated and new ones have emerged. Across the country, individuals, communities, businesses and governments are responding differently. Covid has claimed many casualties. Good reportage need not be one of them. The pandemic and the consequent economic slowdown have also taken its toll on good journalism. At this moment, we need good journalism to be stronger than...

-The Hindu Multiple bank visits, repeated rejections and biometric errors mar payment system, says study. For most rural workers dependent on the Mahatama Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme (MGNREGS), their labour does not end at the work site. According to a study by LibTech India released on Wednesday, many of them are forced to make multiple trips to the bank, adding travel costs and income losses, and face repeated rejections of...

Just before Dhanteras and Diwali this year, the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) released the November edition of its monthly bulletin. The latest RBI Monthly Bulletin says that the GDP has contracted by -8.6 percent in the second quarter of fiscal year 2020-21 (i.e. July-September, 2020) as compared to the gross domestic product (GDP) during the corresponding period last year. It may be noted that India’s GDP shrunk by -23.9...

-The Hindu Business Line Farmers who would be selling their produce at farmgate under the recently-enacted Farmers’ Produce Trade and Commerce (Promotion & Facilitation) Act 2020 will have real-time access to prevailing commodity prices through a market intelligence and price information system, which will be up and running soon, according to top Agriculture Ministry sources. One of the major contentions of a section of farmers protesting against the new farm legislations was...

-The Hindu In RTI reply, NCDC says WHO official sent an “alert mail” to Union Health Minister The World Health Organisation (WHO) informed India as early as January 11 that the reported dates of onset of novel coronavirus circulating in China’s Wuhan ranged between “12-29 December 2019,” according to information accessed through Right to Information (RTI). The RTI reply shows that the WHO also “advised against any travel or trade restrictions on China...