-Newsclick.in The high healthcare costs were expected to be addressed through the introduction of health insurance by the Union government, but it covers less than 30% of hospital charges leaving a heavy financial burden on the poor. Health outcomes have remained grossly unequal, with India's dalits and adivasis living shorter lives of poorer quality, as per a recent paper published by Oxfam India. Private infrastructure now accounts for nearly 62% of India's...

On Janaushadhi Diwas this year (i.e., March 7th, 2022), Prime Minister Shri Narendra Modi stated that the poor and the middle-class benefited from the 'Jan Aushadhi Kendras' that were set up to provide generic drugs at affordable prices. He said that the poor and the middle class saved around Rs.13,000 crore through these stores during the COVID-19 pandemic. In the wake of COVID 19 crisis, the 'Bureau of Pharma PSUs of India'...

-Press release by Mineral Inheritors Rights Association dated March 29, 2022 This is to urgently appeal for immediate release of Deme Oram and 21 other people who are still under arrest since yesterday and their location is still unknown. Yesterday (28th March) Deme Oram and 200 displaced villagers of Bondamunda were initially arrested while they were sitting on an indefinite dharna since 16th of March demanding justice and implementation of the...

In the absence of income or expenditure-based headcount ratio, the growth in the real wages (i.e., nominal wages adjusted against retail inflation) of the manual workers is considered to be a good proxy to assess the trends in poverty. This is because the manual, unskilled/ semi-skilled labourers exist at the bottom of the pyramid or economic hierarchy, and most of them belong to the social categories Scheduled Castes (SCs) and...

-The Hindu Spells of impoverishment during the pandemic were not infrequent, and lower castes and minorities bore the brunt of it Few observations survive the test of time. Fewer gain significance over time. Engel’s Law is a case in point. A version is that the poorer a family, “the greater the proportion of the total outgo which must be used for food. The proportion of the outgo used for food, other things...