-The Hindu 68% of villages still safe, says Additional Chief Secretary, Health Lucknow: Thirty-two percent of villages in Uttar Pradesh have reported positive cases of COVID-19, a senior State official said on Wednesday. So far, 28,742 villages in the State reported positive cases during a testing drive in 89,512 villages, said Amit Mohan Prasad, Additional Chief Secretary, Health. There was no COVID-19 infection in 68% of these villages, said the official, implying that cases...

-The Hindu Only about 15% have been immunised outside urban areas, despite reporting over 60% of the cases Even as the second COVID-19 wave has showed signs of easing, the spread of cases into rural areas and the relatively lower vaccination numbers in rural India points to a burgeoning rural crisis. During the first wave (which peaked in September 2020), the COVID-19 cases started piling up in the urban areas initially and...

With the rise in Covid-19 daily new cases and daily new deaths since March this year, media reports (please click here and here) on migrant workers returning back to their native places (i.e. places of origin) from migration destinations (i.e. workplaces likes cities and large industrial towns to where the informal and low skilled workers from the marginalised sections of the society migrate seasonally, and sometimes for a longer duration,...

-The Hindu The pandemic has highlighted the importance of expanding social security nets Pinki is a 28-year-old Dalit woman from Saharanpur, U.P. Her husband met with an accident during the national lockdown in April 2020. The two of them had to sell all their belongings for his treatment and subsequently became dependent on her parents. Such avoidable miseries were heaped on millions due to the unilateral national lockdown in 2020. The monthly...

-Newsclick.in As India faces a grim economic scenario due to the second wave of the pandemic in India, the government needs to step in to create employment opportunities. The second wave of COVID-19 beginning from February 2021 has not only severely impacted the economic recovery in India, but has also threatened a contraction in its GDP and consequently a sharp spike in unemployment. S&P’s moderate and severe severe downside scenario has estimated...