-RuralIndiaOnline.org With no industrial activity and low wages in agriculture, men from Bhagabanpur in Maldah district go to work in faraway places like Uttarakhand and Himachal Pradesh, just to survive and send money home Rehna Bibi didn’t think much when her phone call to her husband, Anas Shaikh, failed to connect at 10.30 a.m.on February 7, 2021. They had spoken less than two hours ago. “His grandmother had died that morning,” says...

The National Food Security Act 2013 guarantees maternity benefit to the tune of Rs. 6,000/- per child by the Central Government for pregnant women and lactating mothers, barring those who are already availing such benefits while being in regular employment with the Central Government or State Governments or Public Sector Undertakings or under other laws. The NFSA 2013 also legally guarantees free meals for every pregnant woman and lactating mother...

-The Indian Express The lack of a social safety net resulted in misery for workers, many of whom were suddenly left without means of transport. Women were at the receiving end of the Restrictions with the report pointing out how 50 per cent of households surveyed reported that women were spending more time in cooking or fetching firewood than before. The outbreak of the Covid-19 pandemic and the Restrictions that followed has...

-The Indian Express For the relatives of deceased patients, queues begin from the wait at hospitals for their dear one's body, for hearse vans to take them to the Resting place, to finding a furnace free at a crematorium -- the time for each disposal/cremation has increased because of the Covid-19 protocol. Ahmedabad, Rajkot, Surat, Vadodara: Donning a PPE suit Chirag Patel waited at the Vadaj crematorium in Ahmedabad for his turn...

-The Hindu They were “harassed, abused and traumatised” and disparagingly called ‘coronavirus,’ says study A study commissioned by the Indian Council of Social Science Research (ICSSR) on racial discrimination and hate crimes against people from the northeast States found that the “northeast India seamlessly fits [an] Indian’s imagination of a Chinese person”. The study found that 78% of the people from the region who were interviewed believed that physical appearance was the most...