-The Indian Express At the inaugural Indian Express Thinc Migration series presented by Omidyar Network India, moderated by Udit Misra, deputy associate editor, panelists discussed the crisis in India’s internal migration. On migration patterns S Irudaya Rajan: In the 2011 census, India had 450 million migrants. We have policies in the country to increase migration, and policymakers and economists, who believe urbanisation will lead to economic growth. This is reflected in the Smart...

-NDTV.com In February 2015, Prime Minister Narendra Modi, in a speech in Parliament, ridiculed the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (MGNREGA) program as a symbol of the policy failures of the previous United Progressive Alliance (UPA) government headed by Dr. Manmohan Singh and, in his typical coarse style, taunted that he would bleed the program to a slow death. Exactly six years later, on February 12, 2021, Finance Minister Nirmala...

-The Hindu Study highlights the socio-economic impact of accidents There are more fatalities from road crashes among poor families rather than the rich shows a new World Bank study that highlights the socio-economic impact of road accidents — from access to post-accident medical care to coping with the financial distress caused by a mishap. In the study, low income households reported twice the numbers of deaths post-crash vis-à-vis high income households. The risk...

-The Telegraph The committee said, “The absence of reliable and authentic data/information on the numbers of migrant workforce and their movement back to their home States following the outbreak of the Pandemic has apparently impacted the relief and rehabilitation measures.” Commending the National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme, a parliamentary standing committee has said that there is no “better scheme” to provide “sustainable livelihood” to unskilled workers. The Standing Committee on Labour, headed by...

-The Indian Express It is the rural middle class — which experienced a roughly four-decade spell of prosperity from the 1970s and now has its back to the wall — that’s at the forefront of the agitation against the farm reform laws. Prime Minister Narendra Modi has defended his government’s agricultural reform laws by invoking Chaudhary Charan Singh and pointing to the “dayaniya sthiti (sorry plight)” of marginal farmers. These below-one-hectare cultivators...