Most reports and studies by official agencies, international think tanks and private entities indicate the cataclysmic impact of the coronavirus pandemic on the economy and society. They anticipate that lockdowns imposed by various countries across the globe to reduce the exponential diffusion of COVID-19 (i.e. for flattening the curve by social distancing and quarantines) would adversely affect economic growth and disrupt supply chains in most sectors, on top of causing...

-The Hindu The trend across developing countries is to give State governments as much discretion as possible India urgently needs to increase fiscal support for COVID-19 relief and rebuilding. Among comparable developing countries with similar Gross Domestic Product (GDP) per capita, India has spent the least as a share of its GDP. While the Central government has announced measures amounting to 0.8% of GDP, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) estimates that State-level relief...

-The Indian Express Officials from the district administration also insisted the 35-year-old was “mentally disturbed”. Gurgaon (Haryana): On Thursday morning, 35-year-old Chhabu Mandal, a migrant from Bihar who worked as a painter in Gurgaon, sold his phone for Rs 2,500 and used the money to purchase a portable fan and some ration to feed his family — his wife, her parents, and his four children, the youngest five months old. His wife Poonam...

-ThePrint.in Migrant workers protested in Kottayam on 29 March demanding to be sent back home. The state changed its strategy in dealing with them and has since seen no such protests.   New Delhi: It was a blot on the much-touted Kerala COVID-19 response model. On 29 March, hundreds of migrant labourers flooded the streets of Kottayam town demanding that they be sent back to their home states.    The protest caught the...

-RuralIndiaOnline.org ASHA workers in Haryana’s Sonipat district have been pushed to the frontlines of the fight against COVID-19 in a later-than-last-minute attempt to control a pandemic – with no safety gear and very little training Sonipat, Haryana: “Now, we must visit at least 25 households every day, each house at least four times in a month,” Sunita Rani says, “to survey for the coronavirus.” She has been making these rounds for over...