-The Hindu Projects in critical forest habitats are being considered or have been given clearance by the Environment Ministry Few countries are witnessing such severe direct and indirect devastation on account of the COVID-19 pandemic as India. Yet, there is little attention on the roots of our vulnerability. Our challenge is hardly limited to escaping a virus with lockdowns and masks in the short term, and vaccination in the long term. It would...
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Can raising the approved labour budget from 280.76 crore person-days to 306.6 crore person-days help the unskilled returnee migrants who prefer MGNREGA to Garib Kalyan Rojgar Abhiyaan?
Although social activists and concerned economists demanded at least Rs. 1 lakh crore to be earmarked in favour of the Mahatma Gandhi Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme (MGNREGS), the Finance Minister in her budget speech on 1st February allocated only Rs.61,500 crore to it for the financial year 2020-21. As compared to the fund spent on MGNREGA in 2019-20 (i.e. revised estimate of Rs.71,001.81 crore), the amount set aside for the...
More »Joblessness and opportunity in Tamil Nadu -Vikas Kumar, PG Babu and Poonam Singh
-The Hindu The longer-term decline in the labour participation rate can be attributed to a host of factors The COVID-19 pandemic has disrupted economies across the world and presented policymakers with the unenviable task of sustaining employment amidst lockdowns. However, the academic and political debates in India on unemployment, which is widely attributed to jobless growth amidst stagnation in the agricultural and manufacturing sectors, predate the pandemic. It will be useful to...
More »Will agriculture help twice-returned Saurashtra migrants tide over COVID-19 crisis? -Rajeev Khanna
-Down to Earth Several Saurashtra migrants who had returned to work in Surat in May-end said they have fallen back on land resources for agriculture The Saurashtra region in western Gujarat has been witnessing a second wave of reverse migration amid the novel coronavirus disease (COVID-19) pandemic. Labourers employed in the diamond industry in Surat had first migrated back to their villages in Saurashtra when the Union government had first announced nationwide lockdown...
More »Can MGNREGA be a tool for post-COVID-19 rural recovery -Shilp Verma
-Down to Earth Agriculture is the least-affected sector of the economy. It is poised to gain and lead economy’s revival process ‘Year of COVID-19’— this is how 2020 is probably going to be remembered. It has been more than six months that the novel coronavirus disease has been dominating public discourse, news cycles, internet searches and even geopolitics. As on July 8, 2020, India had more than 0.7 million cases. It was among...
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