-The Hindu Despite the debilitating pandemic, state investment in the health sector remains deeply inadequate. On May 18 this year, India recorded 4,529 deaths from COVID-19, the highest daily death toll recorded in the world after the United States in January saw 4,468 deaths. As India combats the pandemic, its neighbours are experiencing spillover from the menacing second wave. The virus has swept through Nepal, while Sri Lanka added as many as...
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Jobs Carnage – 2.5 crore Jobs Lost Since January - Subodh Varma
-Newsclick.in Construction, manufacturing, hospitality sectors most affected. Over 1.7 crore daily wage workers lose jobs. Over 2.5 crore existing jobs have been lost between January and May 2021. The bulk of these losses – about 2.2 crore – have occurred in April and May, the period in which India was engulfed in a brutal second wave of COVID-19, leading to state-level lockdowns of varying degrees. These chilling figures emerge from the latest...
More »Jean Dreze, the Belgian-born hunger economics expert, interviewed by Sindhu Bhattacharya (Moneycontrol.com)
-Moneycontrol.com Jean Dreze, the Belgian-born hunger economics expert, on the devastation of Covid, what plagues MNREGA, central government’s relief measures, stimulus packages, vaccination drive and more. The big lesson from the havoc wrought by Covid-19 is that India must abandon the “fragmented” US model of healthcare, which is a colossal failure, according to developmental economist Jean Dreze. A Belgian-born hunger economics expert who has co-authored books with Nobel laureates Amartya Sen and...
More »How Second Wave Is Decimating Rural Economy -Rohit Inani
-IndiaSpend.com The government has said that the economic impact from the second Covid-19 wave will be less than that of the first. But economists point to signs of a growing rural economic crisis, and call for urgent relief measures to ward off long-term damage. Siolim, Goa: Ramesh Ram, 31, is listed as a textile industry staff worker in the administration's database of migrant workers in south west Bihar's Kaimur district. But for...
More »Overcoming the pandemic’s challenge requires an economic policy reset -Roshan Kishore
-Hindustan Times A long-term look at this government’s economic policies suggests that for it to even consider a response the demand demand for a strong and equitable fiscal stimulus will require a reset of the existing economic policy framework There is now widespread consensus that the second wave of Covid-19 will worsen India’s demand side problem. Even though there is no official data to prove this, most experts and private estimates suggest...
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