-Business Standard Trade unions slam decision, employers welcome it, saying it was absolutely necessary especially in absence of grants from govt to industry for wage payment  In what may come as a major relief to businesses, the Union Government has withdrawn its order directing employers to pay wages to workers, even with units remaining shut during lockdown. On Sunday, the Ministry of Home Affairs (MHA) had issued a fresh set of guidelines which...

-PTI/ Newsclick.in The woman, Ranganayaki, said she merely shared a forwarded post by her friend raising questions on the incident. Amaravati: The Andhra Pradesh CID police have registered a case against a 60-year-old woman for allegedly posting in social media questions pertaining to the recent Styrene gas leak incident in Visakhapatnam in which 12 people lost their lives and hundreds fell ill. The CID is also investigating the role of a man, Malladi...

-The Indian Express The bench asked the Delhi Government to immediately ensure that food grains are distributed to poor, needy and marginalised non-PDS residents from Public Distribution System (PDS). The Delhi High Court Monday expressed anguish over the failure on part of the Delhi Government in implementing its previous “clear cut” directions that “no citizen currently residing in Delhi should go hungry”. “We express our disappointment and dismay,” a bench of Justice Siddharth...

-CaravanMagazine.in On 17 May, for the third time since the COVID-19 pandemic began, the Narendra Modi administration extended India’s lockdown—one of the harshest across the world. For the third time, the Indian Government did so without seeking scientific inputs from a national task force constituted to advise the central Government on its pandemic response, according to multiple members of the team of scientists. There was a consensus among members we spoke...

-TheWire.in In each of the four large South Asian nations, the response of the state to the pandemic has been shaped by long standing and underlying political faultlines. In parts one and two of this article, we have discussed the spread of the COVID-19 pandemic, preparedness (in terms of health infrastructure), and the Government’s public health responses to the pandemic in four South Asian countries. In this concluding part, we discuss two...