-The Indian Express What is disturbing is that in the middle of the current crisis some are now calling for a massive downsizing of the PDS and a shift to cash transfers in place of foodgrains. The Public Distribution System has played an important role in providing relief to people in the aftermath of the national lockdown. With COVID-19 cases increasing and the economy continuing to be in a downturn, some corrective...

-The Indian Express That’s the actual liquidity pumped into Rural areas by government post lockdown – through grain procurement, PM-Kisan and MGNREGA wages. There are many parallels one can draw between the novel coronavirus-induced lockdown (gharbandi) and demonetisation (notebandi), in terms of their impact on India’s farm economy. Both resulted in the same thing – demand destruction – albeit through different routes. Notebandi caused a haemorrhaging of liquidity from the predominantly cash-based farm...

-Livemint.com * Increased government spending on the rural jobs programme has also aided returnee migrants * The urban job loss rate fell nearly 2 percentage points to 11.19% in the week ended 21 June over the previous week The timely arrival of the monsoon has given a much-needed boost to rural employment, absorbing thousands of migrant workers who have returned to their rural homes in seasonal farm jobs. The rural unemployment rate continued to...

-The Telegraph Tablighi stigma and need for government support come up during hindi-belt survey Job loss rates have been similar in rural and urban areas but the perceived “surety of losing work” is higher in the Rural areas and the highest among Muslims among communities, a survey of 1,405 workers across nine Hindi-speaking states has found. “The survey revealed that the perception of uncertainty about future of work was the highest among women...

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...