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...
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The pandemic has hampered social auditing of MGNREGA
When a massive sum of public money is spent on a programme like Mahatma Gandhi Rural Employment Guarantee Programme (MGNREGA)--a demand-driven programme, there is likelihood of financial misappropriations and mismanagement. Thankfully there are checks and balances in the rural employment guarantee legislation to counter such malpractices. It is worth noting that the total allocation under the Mahatma Gandhi Rural Employment Guarantee Programme (MGNREGA) for 2020-21 was Rs. 1,11,500.00 crore (R.E.), up...
More »Supreme Court bats for more facilities for disabled -Krishnadas Rajagopal
-The Hindu Allowing a scribe for candidate not largesse, says bench The government is not conferring a “largesse” on disabled people by facilitating a scribe during the course of the Civil Services Examination, the Supreme Court held in a judgment on Thursday. The Union Public Service Commission and the Department of Personnel and Training (DoPT), by allowing a scribe, are not allowing them a “privilege”, a Bench led by Justice D.Y. Chandrachud declared...
More »Most stillbirths in 2019 happened in India, estimates UN report
Commenting on the recently released fifth round of National Family Health Survey (NFHS-5) data for 17 states and five Union Territories (UTs) in an article published in The Indian Express (dated 6th January, 2021), Arvind Subramanian and his co-authors have stated that India has made progress on certain outcomes, including infant mortality rate (IMR), under-five mortality rate (U5MR) and neonatal mortality rate (NNMR). Relying on various rounds of NFHS data,...
More »A ‘duet’ for India’s urban women -Jean Drèze
-The Hindu Public works could provide valuable support to the urban poor, especially if women get most of the jobs The COVID-19 crisis has drawn attention to the insecurities that haunt the lives of the urban poor. Generally, they are less insecure than the rural poor, partly because fallback work is easier to find in urban areas — if only pulling a rickshaw or selling snacks. Still, the urban poor are exposed...
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