-The Indian Express Nearly 30 years ago, the Lalu Prasad government in Bihar introduced the step of menstrual leave for working women — revolutionary both for the state (which lags on most development indices), and for its time (when women formed a small portion of working staff). Zomato’s decision to grant menstrual leave to its women employees has sparked a polarised discussion on whether such a policy will sow seeds of discrimination...

-The Hindu 17 dead in Odisha; 454 villages cut off in Madhya Pradesh BHUBANESWAR: Over 14 lakh people were affected due to floods in five river systems of Odisha, said the State government here on Sunday. Seventeen people have lost their lives due to wall collapse and by slipping into swollen rivers. “Heavy rain triggered by back-to-back low pressure area over Bay of Bengal had caused flooding in 20 districts. The situation is...

ActionAid Association's (AAA) national level survey among people dependent on the informal economy during the third phase of the national lockdown towards the end of May 2020 (i.e. between May 14th and May 22nd, 2020) has documented the "nature and extent of the transitions in the lives and livelihoods of informal workers, including migrant workers, during the pandemic and provide[s] an insight into the precarity they experience and the coping...

-Down to Earth The programme can provide a safety net for the poor, not just in COVID-19 times, but for times to come In these darkest days of the novel coronavirus disease (COVID-19) — when jobs and economies have collapsed — 56 million households got work in the past three months and these jobs provided relief. This was under the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (MGNREGA), which perhaps is the...

-Hindustan Times Universalise PDS, make it demand-driven; give more funds to states; and ramp up MGNREGS I pen this column with a depressing sense of deja vu. Back in late March as India went into lockdown, I wrote in these pages of the urgent need for the State to change the rules of the game, avoid red tape, improve Centre-state coordination and adapt agile administrative processes as it sought to provide relief...