-Newsclick.in Health care profiteering in COVID times. Spiraling health care expenses in India have been pushing more than 55 million Indians into a state of abject poverty every year. COVID-19 has only worsened the trend for even more families—like Aghan Singh’s. To ensure that his sick mother received the best treatment, Singh, a self-employed motor mechanic in the small town of Bilaspur, in Chhattisgarh, India, decided to take her to a popular private...

-The Indian Express The owners of Republic media and News Nation have been named as wanted accused in the chargesheet. The police said they were likely to charge them in a supplementary chargesheet later. The Mumbai Police Crime Branch on Monday filed a 1,400-page chargesheet in the alleged fake Television Rating Points (TRP) case, naming six channels, including those of Republic Media Network and News Nation, as allegedly paying Money to boost...

-The Telegraph ‘Farmers at mercy of corporates, food security threatened’ Eminent economist, professor emeritus at Jawaharlal Nehru University and activist Prabhat Patnaik traces the downward and dangerous slide of the Indian economy, from the demonetisation to the new farm bills. * The first onslaught was in the form of the demonetisation. While Amartya Sen termed this step “despotic”, Narendra Modi gushed that there would be no black Money after the demonetisation. In the...

-Hindustan Times Paharganj, once a bustling, thriving market whose entire economy depends on foreign tourists, is a microcosm of the devastation caused by the ongoing coronavirus crisis in the capital’s tourism sector. Satyam Bhatnagar runs a handicrafts shop in Paharganj’s main bazar, a backpackers’ paradise that boasts of hundreds of touristy establishments such as Money changers, hotels, rooftop restaurants, tour operators, and handicrafts shops selling a range of stone and wood sculptures,...

-IDROnline.org Often the sole source of income for rural households, NREGA has been plagued with issues during the pandemic. Insights from the ground explain why. During the lockdown, an estimated 20 to 30 million migrant workers returned home, out of work and out of Money. Some of them tried helping their families with farming and some even used the skills they had developed to set up new enterprises. But most remained jobless....