-The Hindu It will complicate payment system, may lead to a reduction in funding, say experts. The Centre has asked the States to split wage payments under the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (MGNREGA) scheme into separate categories for Scheduled Castes, Scheduled Tribes and others from this financial year. Workers’ rights advocates said this will unnecessarily complicate the payment system, and expressed fears that it may lead to a reduction...

-Newsclick.in Report by prominent economist Jean Dreze and Anmol Somanchi highlights the severe economic distress and food crisis suffered by a vast majority of Indian poor following the 2020 lockdown. It demands a stronger wave of relief measures to avoid a repeat of the crisis. On May 31, 2021, prominent economist Jean Drèze and Anmol Somanchi published a detailed report analysing the impact of the COVID-19 crisis on food security, employment, income,...

-The Hindu The court quoted from a National Statistics Office survey of 2018 which said that around four per cent of the rural households and 23% of the urban households possessed a computer Taking a dig at the Centre’s argument that the poor and marginalised can lean on friends to register online for vaccination, the Supreme Court has said even the digitally literate are finding it hard to get vaccine slots on...

-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...

-Down to Earth Physical distancing as well as home quarantining have changed the housing standardisation game; an overhaul is needed India witnessed a mass exodus of migrant workers in April 2020: Nearly 40 million migrant workers were affected by the lockdown imposed to curb the spread of the novel coronavirus disease (COVID-19), according to the World Bank. Some estimates pegged the figure at 120-140 million. In April 2021, the country had a deja-vu:...