-Article-14.com Scepticism about Covid-19. Lack of smartphones, health information and healthcare. Resistance to vaccination. We found a perfect storm devastating the poor, southwestern interiors of India’s most-populous state. Banda (Uttar Pradesh): “At least one person in every household here is extremely unwell.” Shivdevi, who uses only one name, has over a decade’s professional experience as a journalist and has been reporting from rural Bundelkhand in southwestern Uttar Pradesh (UP) for the women-run, grassroots...

-The Hindu Business Line/ NetworkIdeas.org The disease ripping through the country is only one of the destructive forces affecting the lives of hundreds of millions of Indians. The dramatic increase in hunger is another. Like devastation wrought by the current surge in coronavirus infections, this too is the result of policy failure and official callousness. It is already causing immense suffering among affected people and will have serious repercussions on their...

With the rise in Covid-19 daily new cases and daily new deaths since March this year, media reports (please click here and here) on migrant workers returning back to their native places (i.e. places of origin) from migration destinations (i.e. workplaces likes cities and large industrial towns to where the informal and low skilled workers from the marginalised sections of the society migrate seasonally, and sometimes for a longer duration,...

-The Tribune Cabinet also approves purchase of Covaxin for 18-44 category industrial workers The Punjab government on Thursday decided to join the COVAX facility alliance for global sourcing and procurement of Covid vaccines at the best price, becoming the first state to take such a step amid vaccine shortage in the country. The decision was taken during the Cabinet meeting, which also approved the purchase of Covaxin for industrial workers, for whose vaccination...

-The Indian Express Innovation in vaccine production can have an impact only if it is accessible to all. Patents and access to life-saving drugs has always been an emotive and contentious issue. The right to healthy life is a moral minimum, and to find a rational basis to deny it is deeply offensive to the idea of life itself. At the same time, pharma corporations and institutions claim patents are a just...