-The Indian Express The pandemic may have limited our ability to connect with the external world, but for several Indian women, isolation isn’t unfamiliar or new When we tell our children and grandchildren about 2020, we will talk about a time when we shut ourselves in our homes to keep the world and the pandemic out. Our only contact with friends and relatives was via the telephone, and we only ventured out...

-TheWire.in The mass exodus of migrant workers from cities after the nationwide lockdown has amplified the housing crisis for migrant workers in cities. ‘Low-income migrants’ in cities have always subsumed under the blanket, but arguably vague, term ‘urban poor’. This categorisation overlooks the mobility dimension of migrant workers’ lives where they are constantly moving between places in search of work, following capital. The government’s own estimates also indicate that with each passing...

-The Indian Express The March 4 letter said that FCI, Zonal Office (N), Noida, has directed that land records are a must for wheat procurement in RMS 2021-22. Jalandhar: The Food Corporation of India’s (FCI) Punjab office on Thursday wrote to the director of food, civil supplies and consumer affairs seeking land records of farmers so as to make direct online payment of Minimum Support Price (MSP) to their bank accounts from...

When a massive sum of public money is spent on a programme like Mahatma Gandhi Rural Employment Guarantee Programme (MGNREGA)--a demand-driven programme, there is likelihood of financial misappropriations and mismanagement. Thankfully there are checks and balances in the rural employment guarantee legislation to counter such malpractices. It is worth noting that the total allocation under the Mahatma Gandhi Rural Employment Guarantee Programme (MGNREGA) for 2020-21 was Rs. 1,11,500.00 crore (R.E.), up...

-The Indian Express NITI Aayog’s draft report is well-intentioned. But its failure to address the policy distortions at the root of migrant workers’ issues cannot be overlooked The lockdown-induced suffering of millions of migrants raised awareness regarding their magnitude, vulnerability, and role in the economy. It also led to a flurry of measures by the central and state governments. It is now encouraging that the Niti Aayog, on the request of the...