-The Indian Express The data shows that acute respiratory infection led to 3,740 deaths in 2018 -- the highest in six years (according to these provisional estimates). The highest number of deaths due to acute respiratory infection were reported in West Bengal (732), followed by Uttar Pradesh (699), Andhra Pradesh (587), Delhi (492). After declining for two years, the average number of heat wave days increased 82.6 per cent year-on-year to 157...

-Scroll.in Governments must take this opportunity to revamp their strategies to house migrant workers. On March 24, when the government announced a nationwide lockdown to prevent the spread of coronavirus, India was served a fierce reminder that its Cities are, by design, exclusionary. Millions of workers around the country were left cashless, hungry and in many instances, homeless. Many of them set out for their villages hundreds of kilometres away – on...

-The Indian Express Beginning May, a huge influx of returning migrants, unable to sustain themselves in locked-down Cities, walking kilometres, starving in trains, reached the succour of home in Bihar. But with no work, and the lockdown affecting the rural economy as well with falling agricultural prices, they are leaving again. Patna: THEY STAND close to each other, bags slung over shoulders, noses pressed against the glass. They watch flights land and...

-The Tribune The job guarantee scheme kept the rural sector afloat during the pandemic-induced lockdown. The number of people employed under MGNREGA in Punjab has gone up considerably. AMID the Covid crisis, the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (MGNREGA) has sustained thousands of villagers who had been rendered jobless across Punjab. These also include the youth who returned to villages after they lost their jobs in towns and Cities. After the...

-Down to Earth DTE visited village Dhamna in Uttar Pradesh’s Jalaun district to see how life in rural India is being sustained by the biggest employment guarantee scheme in the world People don’t eat paani poori during a pandemic. Out-of-business garment shops don’t employ tailors or hire security guards. It’s been five months since the novel coronavirus disease (COVID-19) pandemic and the subsequent countrywide lockdown stripped migrant labourers of their livelihood, leading to...