-The Hindu National Disaster Management Authority given six weeks to frame the guidelines for fixing the ex gratia meant for the families of those who died because of the pandemic. The Supreme Court on Wednesday pulled up the National Disaster Management Authority (NDMA), of which the Prime Minister is the ex officio chairperson, for “failing to perform its duty” to recommend ex gratia assistance for families of those who lost their loved...

-TheWire.in COVID-19 struck like a bolt from the blue for the residents of Beed, who were already struggling with agrarian crisis, leaving them at the mercy of crumbling public health facilities. “I don’t know what finally caused her death but I know she did not get the attention she deserved.” Subash Kabade says this, describing his sister’s death. The night before his sister, Lata Survase, died in the Civil Hospital in Maharashtra’s Beed...

The rise in COVID-19 daily new cases and daily new deaths compelled many state governments to impose local level lockdowns during April-May 2021. As of 20th April, 2021, partial lockdowns were noticed in 10 states across the country and complete lockdown was imposed in Delhi. As of 8th May, 2021, nearly the entire country was under complete lockdown as a result of either partial lockdowns and night curfews or complete...

-TheWire.in Sainath dedicated the prize to his fellow journalists who are reporting from rural India and to PARI, the news website he founded in 2014. New Delhi: Renowned journalist P. Sainath was the recipients of the Fukuoka Grand Prize 2021, one of Japan’s top awards open to people from all Asian countries for “investigate[ing] impoverished farming villages in India, listen[ing] to voices from the rural population”. The Fukuoka Prize has three categories, Academic...

-CBGAIndia.in India’s response to the pandemic has depended heavily on the exploited labour of women workers, most of them from marginalised backgrounds. These are ASHAs or Accredited Social Health Activists, the cadre of frontline health workers that has been mobilised for everything from door-to-door surveys, distributing medicine kits, measuring oxygen saturation, monitoring containment zones and spreading awareness about vaccines. 70,000 such women recently went on strike in Maharashtra demanding higher pay,...