-The Hindu In the U.S., India and Brazil, messianic populism, polarisation and insularity have made the pandemic that much worse A year and counting into the greatest health crisis the world has faced in over a century we can identify one overwhelming factor that separates the countries that have done relatively well from those that have been complete disasters:Autocrcy elected autocrats. By any measure the most dismal performers in the democratic world...

-The Hindu The universalisation of social security remains an unfulfilled aspiration in the new code on social security As COVID-19 destroys lives and livelihoods, an unprepared government has rendered low-paid, informal workers, who constitute 91% of the workforce, totally hapless, pushing them further into poverty. Imagine if these same informal workers had social security (including free basic curative care in public clinics and hospitals, the elderly had old age pensions, the dying...

-The Hindu Current price negotiated through bulk orders may not be replicable: Finance Secy The first lot of vaccines were procured by the Centre using PM CARES funds at a higher rate than the subsequent rounds paid for by budgetary allocations, The Hindu has learnt from the response to a Right to Information request by a transparency activist. The Health Ministry response said that the initial 5.6 crore doses of Covishield were bought...

In the month of April this year, there has been an unprecedented upsurge in daily new cases and daily new deaths in the country due to Covid-19. States, which reported large increases in daily new cases and daily new deaths, are Maharashtra, Kerala, Karnataka, Delhi and Uttar Pradesh, to name but a few.   Data accessed from https://www.covid19india.org/, which is a crowdsourced platform and an independent aggregator of daily Covid-19 figures and...

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...