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...

-TheWire.in As one village prepares to take the government to court, another claims panchayat land reserved for scheduled castes was auctioned by proxy to ‘upper caste’ families. Chandigarh: One-and-a-half months ago, Amrik Kaur, sarpanch of village Sekhowal in Ludhiana district, was asked to attend a meeting at the Ludhiana deputy commissioner’s office. There, she was asked to give her consent for the transfer of a portion of the village common (shamlat) land...

-The Hindu He is 91 and still angry. The veteran cop talks of how the police-neta nexus can be broken Having tackled the underworld in Mumbai and Khalistani terror in Punjab, you’d think retired IPS officer Julio Ribeiro would have seen it all. Yet, the Vikas Dubey ‘encounter’ killing in Uttar Pradesh and the custodial deaths of a father and son in Tamil Nadu so shook the 91-year-old “supercop” that he wrote...

-The Tribune Is there a case to be made for privatisation to help the government raise funds and reduce its fiscal burden and avoid having to recapitalise them every now and then? It is based on an entirely faulty understanding of why the govt needs to own banks. Banks are instruments through which capital flows into the economy. Bank privatisation is a hot topic again. It kicked off when Finance Minister Nirmala...

-The Tribune The job guarantee scheme kept the rural sector afloat during the pandemic-induced lockdown. The number of people employed under MGNREGA in Punjab has gone up considerably. AMID the Covid crisis, the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (MGNREGA) has sustained thousands of villagers who had been rendered jobless across Punjab. These also include the youth who returned to villages after they lost their jobs in towns and cities. After the...