-The Hindu The public sector, private players and civil society should all work together for public service delivery COVID-19 has tested the resilience of all public institutions. Despite its efforts, bureaucracy has emerged as a major concern for the ineffective response to the COVID-19 crisis. This inadequacy is the reflection of the outdated nature of public bureaucracy. In the 21st century, democratic countries are still relying on traditional bureaucracies to perform public policy...

-The Hindu States, especially in the north, are facing the brunt of the second wave, made worse by their poor health infrastructure When the first wave of the novel coronavirus pandemic hit the country, the central government imposed the strictest lockdown for almost two months. For most of the migrants stuck in urban areas without incomes, jobs and food to survive, the only escape was to walk back to the rural areas...

-Hindustan Times Studies on migrants, domestic workers, and jobs put off till situation improves. The delay may have an adverse impact on the proposed national employment policy. The Union government has suspended work on four key surveys on migrants, domestic workers, and jobs created by the transport sector and Professionals because of the deadly second wave of the pandemic, possibly delaying a national employment policy based on these surveys. With lockdowns and curfews...

In the month of April this year, there has been an unprecedented upsurge in daily new cases and daily new deaths in the country due to Covid-19. States, which reported large increases in daily new cases and daily new deaths, are Maharashtra, Kerala, Karnataka, Delhi and Uttar Pradesh, to name but a few.   Data accessed from https://www.covid19india.org/, which is a crowdsourced platform and an independent aggregator of daily Covid-19 figures and...

-The Indian Express Is the government postponing the use of the Rs 35,000-crore allocated for vaccine development in the current Budget? Has it been shy in using its good offices with the US to intercede on behalf of the country’s vaccine manufacturing companies? This time, last year, India was under a lockdown announced by Prime Minister Narendra Modi in a televised address during which he issued several messages of caution. He talked...