-The Hindu Business Line Last week, Prime Minister Narendra Modi threw open the auction of 41 coal blocks for commercial mining. The decision, which was pART of the announcements made by the Centre under the Atmanirbhar Bharat Abhiyan, was already proposed in January through the Mineral Laws (Amendment) Ordinance, 2020. What is it? These auctions invite pARTicipants to mine coal blocks by bids on the percentage value of coal sold that they will...

-The Indian Express Viable companies, with good credit history, are able to raise funds, but the most needy among the MSMEs are facing a double whammy: slump in demand and lack of finance. Banks have stARTed disbursing funds to Micro, Small and Medium Enterprises under the 100% Emergency Credit Line Guarantee Scheme announced by Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman last month but for many firms, hit hard by the pandemic lockdown, credit is...

A recent survey that was conducted through telephonic interviews among 1,405 respondents across the states of Delhi-NCR, Uttar Pradesh, Bihar, Haryana, Himachal Pradesh, Assam, Rajasthan and Jharkhand reveals the precarious conditions of workers nearly 45 days after the announcement of COVID-19 lockdown. The report entitled Labouring Lives: Hunger, Precarity and Despair amid Lockdown tries to understand the extent (and depth) of job loss and hunger 45 days after the lockdown. Hunger and...

-The Hindu Even as COVID-19 cases and deaths are rapidly rising in the capital, the AAP government is grappling with complaints of under-reporting, inadequate facilities and exploitative private hospitals. Nikhil M. Babu reports on how it frittered away an opportunity to ramp up healthcare facilities during the lockdown period On February 29 afternoon, when 45-year-old Rohit Dutta walked into the Ram Manohar Lohia Hospital in New Delhi to take a COVID-19 test,...

-Economic and Political Weekly Farmer suicides are an unfortunate result of the agrarian distress plaguing the rural economy of many states of the country. Marathwada and Vidarbha regions in Maharashtra have recorded very high numbers of farmer suicides, and an attempt to calculate the number of suicides and the suicide mortality rate is the first step towards gaining an in-depth understanding of the prevalence and seriousness of the issue. An analysis...