-RuralIndiaOnline.org Poor public infrastructure, unaffordable private medical care and limited access to the state health insurance scheme are pushing Covid patients and their families into long-term debt in Marathwada  Eight days after testing positive for Covid-19, Ramling Sanap died in the hospital where he was being treated for the infection. But it wasn’t the virus that killed him. A few hours before he died, Ramling, 40, had phoned his wife, Rajubai, from the...

-The Hindu This is ‘abject poverty’, and if the economy is to be repaired, the number of the poor has to be meticulously counted The son of a corn merchant-turned sociologist, Charles Booth had little patience for Charles Dickens and others in his time, who used lyrical prose to describe the desperation of the poor in working class London. Booth was also angry, in 1885, over the claims made by F.D. Hyndman,...

-Scroll.in/ India Spend The country needs a nationwide campaign to protect its children from the economic and social consequences of lockdowns and loss of caregivers, say experts. A six-month-old who was touched inappropriately by her father while they were stuck at home during the Covid-19 lockdown. A 14-year-old who might not be able to go back to school as his father, the family’s only earning member, has died from the disease. Five...

-The New indian Express The White Army -- a collective of 30 masons, painters, auto drivers, students, and an electrician of Arayi village -- has been helping build houses for the poor for the past eight years. KASARAGOD: Vidya Shankar's Tamil Nadu-based husband, a daily wage Labourer, died four years ago in Salem. That was the second time she was orphaned. The first was when she was a teenager. The second time,...

-ThePrint.in Women employed as domestic workers in India’s cities have lost work in vast numbers, forcing many to return to their home villages. Lasuben Shivlal Raval is a 70-year-old grandmother from Ahmedabad in India. She has worked as a ‘headloader’ – a goods carrier – in one of the city’s biggest wholesale cloth markets for decades. Her work was always tough, but life became immeasurably harder for Lasuben and her fellow workers...