-Livemint.com * A ground report reveals pervasive hunger and undernourishment in rural India awash with returning migrants * Just providing rice and wheat at a highly subsidized price may not be enough when day jobs are scant and families have no cash in hand BANDA: Thanks to an all-familiar power cut in the evening, it’s pitch dark in Jhandupurva village. A few torch lights from smart phones pierce through the darkness and illuminate...

-The Hindu There are four things that need to be done in the country in the wake of the pandemic crisis When we hear the word migration, we think of Kerala and West Asia, or the United States and the West. However, the number of Indians who have migrated over the past decades to these geographies is minuscule compared to the vastness of the movement within the country. A few years ago,...

-Hindustan Times Less than 57% of the people who sought work under the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme (MGNREGS) have received jobs under the programme. At a time when millions of migrant workers who have returned home to the hinterland are looking towards it for a livelihood, the government’s flagship rural jobs programme has got off to a slow start in the new financial year, government data show, amid the...

-The Hindu They criticised the top court for its “self-effacing deference” to the government Hours before taking suo motu cognisance of “certain lapses” in government measures dealing with migrant workers, the Supreme Court received a stinging letter from 10 senior lawyers each from Delhi and Mumbai that was critical of its “self-effacing deference” to the government, “unwillingness” and “apparent indifference” in the face of the “enormous humanitarian crisis”. The senior lawyers, who include...

-Outlook India The short-term measures by the government to ensure the immediate safety, food and shelter for the migrants will fail to suffice in the long run as they do nothing to tackle the underlying causes that contribute to the systemic discrimination and deprivation of the migrants. The spread of novel Coronavirus has created its own spectrum of distress and turmoil for individuals across social groups around the world, but more for...