-Livemint.com From an already low base, women’s employment has fallen further, and a recovery will be difficult A clutch of early studies on the impact of the lockdown on employment is showing that women’s employment could be particularly badly hit. Given India’s record low female workforce participation rates, growing child care demands, and a looming recession, researchers fear that women could be increasingly shut out of the productive economy. To estimate the impact...

-The Indian Express The cash crunch is hindering the state governments’ relief efforts at every step. Centre must urgently provide additional foodgrain to poorest states for expanding PDS coverage. As the monsoon advances, there is an urgent need to consider what can be done to prevent hunger during the rainy season — the hardest time of the year for poor families in large parts of rural India. The monsoon is expected to...

-Business Standard Instead of the promised 100 days of work, average work provided stood just shy of one-fifth of it in this financial year till June 9 Generating 100 days of work, guaranteed under MGNREGA for each household, has been a far cry so far even as there is demand for increasing the promised work days. Congress president Sonia Gandhi recently criticised the Modi government for not paying heed to the demand of...

-Livemint.com There has been demands for linking MGNREGA wage with consumer price index-rural (CPI-R) for an annual revision of wages based on contemporary changes in rural geography NEW DELHI: Odisha’s Keonjhar district administration on Friday said it has become the first in the country to provide higher minimum wages to those taking up jobs under the national rural employment guarantee scheme. In a post on Twitter, the Keonjhar district administration said those working...

-TheWire.in It is high time migrant workers were included in the ambit of the public distribution system. The government’s proposal for ‘one nation one ration card’ is a longstanding need for migrant labourers across the country. The proposed measure will provide workers not only with monthly food entitlements wherever they are living for work, but also improve their nutritional status. Tracing developments in the public distribution system (PDS), it can be seen that...