-The Indian Express Barring Mirzapur in UP, none of these districts is included in the official government list of 116 districts that received most returning migrant workers during the lockdown, and where the government had launched the PM Garib Kalyan Rojgar Abhiyaan on June 20. New Delhi: At least 12 districts have exceeded their annual job creation targets by generating substantially higher numbers of person-days’ work between April 1 and July 21,...

-The Hindu Business Line In Himachal Pradesh, the scheme comes as a breather to those who lost their jobs Nand Lal was working in an electronics company at Parwanoo, an industrial town in Solan district of Himachal Pradesh, when the first lockdown was announced, in March. He had no choice but to come back to Surah, his village in the Murhag panchayat of Mandi district. Since then, he has already worked for 56...

-The Hindu The relief measures do not seem to be commensurate with the economic disruption caused by the lockdown How does India compare in the quantity and quality of its COVID-19 response to other developing countries? Here we extend our earlier analysis of India’s fiscal response (The Hindu online, “India must enhance fiscal support for COVID-19 relief and rebuilding”, April 18, 2020) drawing on the International Monetary Fund Policy Tracker, the COVID-19...

-Down to Earth DTE visited village Dhamna in Uttar Pradesh’s Jalaun district to see how life in rural India is being sustained by the biggest employment guarantee scheme in the world People don’t eat paani poori during a pandemic. Out-of-business garment shops don’t employ tailors or hire security guards. It’s been five months since the novel coronavirus disease (COVID-19) pandemic and the subsequent countrywide lockdown stripped migrant labourers of their livelihood, leading to...

-Livemint.com As a part of the relief measures, while the PDS system could reach a vast majority of people both in rural and urban areas, the system has failed to identify the affected informally employed labour force in largely urban areas. This makes a case for introducing an urban replica of MGNREGA With laudable measures like the increased allocation in Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (MGNREGA) and the Pradhan Mantri...