-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...

-Financial Express As part of the strategy to spur the rural economy, migrants should be encouraged to invest in the medium-term and long-term livelihood options. Roti, Kapda and Makan symbolise the essential requirements for a decent living with the absolute basic being food (roti). The question of lives and livelihood is inextricably linked to food. Perhaps, the most disruptive impact of the Covid-19 pandemic has been the forced return of migrants to...

Although social activists and concerned economists demanded at least Rs. 1 lakh crore to be earmarked in favour of the Mahatma Gandhi Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme (MGNREGS), the Finance Minister in her budget speech on 1st February allocated only Rs.61,500 crore to it for the financial year 2020-21. As compared to the fund spent on MGNREGA in 2019-20 (i.e. revised estimate of Rs.71,001.81 crore), the amount set aside for the...

-Down to Earth Agriculture is the least-affected sector of the economy. It is poised to gain and lead economy’s revival process ‘Year of COVID-19’— this is how 2020 is probably going to be remembered. It has been more than six months that the novel coronavirus disease has been dominating public discourse, news cycles, internet searches and even geopolitics. As on July 8, 2020, India had more than 0.7 million cases. It was among...

-Down to Earth Several Saurashtra migrants who had returned to work in Surat in May-end said they have fallen back on land resources for agriculture The Saurashtra region in western Gujarat has been witnessing a second wave of reverse migration amid the novel coronavirus disease (COVID-19) pandemic. Labourers employed in the diamond industry in Surat had first migrated back to their villages in Saurashtra when the Union government had first announced nationwide lockdown...