-Press note by NREGA Sangharsh Morcha dated 24 March, 2020 A group of concerned citizens have appealed the Central and state governments to deliver emergency relief to informal labour force, agricultural workers, small and marginal farmers, MGNREGA workers, old-age pensioners, widows, the differently-abled, slum dwellers, the homeless and other such vulnerable communities through programmes like National Food Security Act (NFSA), Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (MGNREGA), Pensions, Ujjwala scheme,...

-TheWire.in Caught in a quagmire of legislations, most construction workers of a particular colony have had no money to deal with illnesses and daily needs. New Delhi: Mariam spent her younger days toiling as a construction worker. When she could no longer work as an elderly person, she got the benefit of a special pension meant for construction workers. This pension of Rs 3,900 per month became the main source of her subsistence...

-Frontline.in The Budget lacks any serious effort to address the main issues of unemployment, agrarian distress and falling incomes, revealing a high level of official insensitivity. A Budget during a time of recession, increasing unemployment, agrarian distress, falling incomes, demand constraint and malnutrition would have done well to first acknowledge the mess that policies have created and then taken steps to provide employment, boost rural incomes, increase purchasing power and thereby demand. Coming...

-TheWire.in The state government has also reduced the cut-off age for old age pensioners from 65 to 60 years. New Delhi: Close to 42 lakh pensioners in Andhra Pradesh received their Pensions at their houses from the village and ward volunteers under the state government’s ‘Intivadhakey Pension’ programme, according to a report in The Hindu. The massive doorstep pension disbursement initiative was one of the promises in the YSRCP’s election manifesto and was...

-The Hindu Shanti Devi, a 70-year-old widow, spends her days cleaning houses in Okhla to earn a meagre sum as she has not got her government pension for over two years. “I went to the social welfare office. I showed them my passbook, my Aadhaar card, but they just gave me a slip saying my pension has been stopped and told me to approach the local MLA,” she says, pulling a...