-The Hindu A new publication contends that their lockdown misery was no anomaly but an effect of exclusion from full citizenship When PRIme Minister Narendra Modi announced the world’s most stringent lockdown on March 24, 2020 with barely four hours notice, lakhs of migrant workers across the country found themselves trapped in a novel situation: their livelihood in the city was gone, but they could not return to their native villages. The...

-Newsclick.in Health care profiteering in COVID times. Spiraling health care expenses in India have been pushing more than 55 million Indians into a state of abject poverty every year. COVID-19 has only worsened the trend for even more families—like Aghan Singh’s. To ensure that his sick mother received the best treatment, Singh, a self-employed motor mechanic in the small town of Bilaspur, in Chhattisgarh, India, decided to take her to a popular PRIvate...

-Business Standard The tentative data sourced from the GKRA website shows that since June, around 1.10 million works have been completed under the campaign. Much of the Rs 10,000-crore extra allocation for the Garib Kalyan Rojgar Abhiyan (GKRA), an employment scheme for migrants thrown adrift by the sudden lockdown in March, will be spent on works done through the flagship Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (MGNREGA) and rural housing project....

-Newsclick.in The state government is said to be formalising plans to give 40% of "degraded forest land" to PRIvate firms, allege activists. New Delhi: Amidst the ongoing battle by tribal communities in India to formalise their land claims, the Madhya Pradesh government has reportedly proposed the PRIvatisation of 40% of “degraded forest land” to PRIvate firms. The government claims that this land is wasteland and has degraded for multiple reasons, and that PRIvate...

-Livemint.com * The supply chain disruption in poultry continues, further hurting the nutritional standards of poorer households * The current steep PRIces of items that make up the retail food basket—be it eggs, pulses or vegetables—is evidently taking a toll on millions of Indian households NEW DELHI: Banks should not advance large loans to farmers, least of all to those in the poultry business, an exasperated Ramesh Mehla said over the phone. He...