-Press note by Right to Food Campaign (Jharkhand) dated 21st March, 2020 As the coronavirus (COVID-19) spreads, a double crisis looms over Jharkhand: a health crisis and an economic crisis. Already, unemployed migrant workers are returning en masse from different states, including some (e.g. Maharashtra) with many coronavirus cases. Food vendors are losing business, and more occupations are likely to be hit as economic activity slows down. As more and more...

After the outbreak of COVID-19 in China during early January this year and its dissemination globally within a few days, health experts have suggested ways to check its spread exponentially among the rest of the population. In the age of internet connectivity, work-from-home and self-isolation have been advised as solutions to ensure social distancing and avoid large-scale social gatherings. Experts have asked governments and private enterprises to keep people at...

-The Telegraph Prospects of the future damaged by failing development policy to collapsing democracy The recent estimate of GDP growth for the third quarter of 2019-20, at around 4.7 per cent, has prompted a predictable sense of gloom. However, even the 4.7 per cent estimate is deceptive, since in per-capita terms, the corresponding figure would be just above 3 per cent. This, sadly, is no more than half the growth rate of...

-Frontline.in The Budget lacks any serious effort to address the main issues of unemployment, agrarian distress and falling incomes, revealing a high level of official insensitivity. A Budget during a time of recession, increasing unemployment, agrarian distress, falling incomes, demand constraint and malnutrition would have done well to first acknowledge the mess that policies have created and then taken steps to provide employment, boost rural incomes, increase purchasing power and thereby demand. Coming...

-Newsclick.in Punjab is industrialised and its agriculture is mechanised. The state is in the grip of a downturn which has hurt the migrant poor most. The Union Budget is the talk of the town, but the economic downturn is not. The prevailing economic situation has hurt all sectors of the business and economy. One symptom of the downturn is that unemployment has broken a 45-year record. Even if these facts are known,...