-PTI/ Outlook India The country's R-value, steadily increasing over the last few weeks, is 1.07 for the week between April 12-18, according to Sitabhra Sinha. In the preceding April 5-11 week, it was 0.93. India's Effective Reproduction Number (R) for Covid, an indicator of how quickly the infection is spreading, has increased to over one for the first time since January, estimates a researcher from Chennai's Institute of Mathematical Sciences. The country's R-value,...

-The Telegraph Health authorities detected 2,411 new cases on Saturday, the first overnight spike, raising the number of Covid-19 patients to 37,776 India’s coronavirus epidemic remains on an exponential growth curve and not a linear curve as government officials had suggested last week, researchers and public health experts tracking the country’s rising Covid-19 counts said on Saturday. Health authorities detected 2,411 new cases on Saturday, the first overnight spike greater than 2,000, raising...

-Frontline The Central government's proposal to hand over the supply of supplementary nutrition to NGOs in the name of "community participation" is surely an invitation for private profiteering on the back of this supposedly public scheme. ENSURING safe and healthy conditions for the reproduction of the population is obviously the most fundamental requirement of any society. So the progress of a society can be determined (and indeed is routinely judged) by the...

A universal pension scheme for social protection must be part of a broader strategy of economic expansion different from the present neoliberal order. INDIA must be one of the worst countries in the world in terms of not providing even minimal social security for most of its people. This is not just a major failure of the development project in the country – it is also a significant cause of...

In the absence of legislation to protect women from sexual harassment at the workplace, the Supreme Court in 1997 laid down guidelines in the Vishaka vs State of Rajasthan in 1997. Thirteen years later, Parliament came up with the “Protection of Women against Sexual Harassment at Workplace Bill, 2010”. However, the Bill sees sexual harassment at the workplace not as a criminal offence but as a mere civil wrong, the...