-NetworkIdeas.org With its gross debt as of March 31, 2021 placed at Rs. 1.8 lakh crore and losses in the preceding quarter totalling more than Rs. 7,000 crore, Vi (former Vodafone Idea), once India’s largest telecom company in terms of subscriber base, is staring at bankruptcy. In a last-ditch effort to win state support to survive, Kumar Mangalam Birla, the Chairman of Vi, wrote to the government in June, offering to...

-Down to Earth Amid a derailing COVID-19 pandemic, after Cyclone Tauktae devastation, comes a deep deficit in rainfall Farmers in Gujarat are staring a possible drought after the failure of the southwest monsoon in the state this year. This, even as people in the state have already suffered nearly two years of economic difficulties due to the novel coronavirus disease (COVID-19) pandemic and it has been three months since Cyclone Tauktae.  Please click...

-The Telegraph India spends only 0.04 per cent of its GDP on social security pension; several states add to the pension from their own funds Sulochana Behera eagerly waits for her old-age pension of Rs 500 every month at her home in Garh Nipania village in Puri district, Odisha. Within hours of receiving the sum, the widowed Sulochana spends it all on medicine and food that barely last a week. She then starts...

-The Telegraph However, experts say this is largely an illusion caused by a distressed population increasingly taking up low-paid informal jobs A government survey has portrayed an improved unemployment situation between July 2019 and June 2020 on certain parameters, but experts say this is largely an illusion caused by a distressed population increasingly taking up low-paid informal jobs. Besides, while one standard of measurement in the survey appears to show an improvement, another...

-Newsclick.in The pandemic has again exposed the true nature of capitalism with profit being the primary driver irrespective of the rising inequalities. The contrast between the devastating effects of the Covid-19 pandemic on the lives and livelihood of the working-class population and the soaring profits of big pharma companies in the corresponding period is abhorrent. Please click here to read more.  ...