-The Hindu Measuring excess deaths is the best possible way to estimate the count of COVID-19 deaths The real time mortality impact of the COVID-19 pandemic is an important statistical measure to guide policy responses. But measuring the actual count is not an easy task. WHO, in January 2021, had estimated, based on excess deaths data in Europe and the American continents, that actual deaths were at least 1.6 times over the...
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Overcoming the pandemic’s challenge requires an economic policy reset -Roshan Kishore
-Hindustan Times A long-term look at this government’s economic policies suggests that for it to even consider a response the demand demand for a strong and equitable fiscal stimulus will require a reset of the existing economic policy framework There is now widespread consensus that the second wave of Covid-19 will worsen India’s demand side problem. Even though there is no Official Data to prove this, most experts and private estimates suggest...
More »A fatal war on transparency -Aniket Aga and Chitrangada Choudhury
-The Hindu Official secrecy on pandemic policies aggravates a crisis In August 2020, the Modi government constituted the National Expert Group on Vaccine Administration for COVID-19 (NEGVAC) as a nodal agency on all matters related to vaccine administration and rollout. Asked under the Right to Information (RTI) Act for details of the NEGVAC’s meetings, the Health Ministry, which anchors the expert group, replied that it does not know where the concerned documents...
More »40% MGNREGA wage payments for April, May still pending -Priscilla Jebaraj
-The Hindu Centre taking 26 days to clear payment orders generated by States: study Almost 14% of MGNREGA wage payments from April are still pending more than a month later, while 60% of May payments are also pending, according to scheme data. A recent study of the MGNREGA wage transactions in Jharkhand shows that while the States are generating fund transfer orders without delays, it is the Centre which is dragging its...
More »Riverside graves of the Covid dead tell a story of the media’s failure -Kalpana Sharma
-Newslaundry.com And of a crisis of economic distress and hunger that’s gone largely unreported. The defining image of this second wave of the pandemic in India has now become the hundreds of shallow graves along the Ganga and other rivers, replacing the searing images of burning pyres. These graves are a stark reminder not just of the discrepancy in death data between the official and the actual, but they also hint at...
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