Australian Broadcasting Corporation Poonam Gond is learning to describe her pain by numbers. Zero means no pain and 10 is agony. Poonam was at seven late last month. "I have never known zero pain," she said, sitting in the plastic chair where she spends most of her days. The 19-year-old has sickle cell disease, a genetic blood disorder. Her medicine ran out weeks ago. Poonam's social worker, Geeta Aayam, nods as she...

-Down to Earth Tough new conditions emerge in the compromise deal to ease WTO intellectual property barriers to production of COVID-19 medical tools We are back to square one. Back to the beginning after 18 months of a wearying, tortuous series of negotiations that carried on while millions of lives hung in the balance — and still do. The waiver of intellectual property (IP) rights on medicines, vaccines and diagnostics to fight the...

-Business Standard Since jobs will remain scarce for the foreseeable future, an unemployment allowance should be the next big social-security initiative, writes T N Ninan Crises in the Indian economy used to be the “normal”. In the 12 years from 1962 to 1974, India fought three wars, suffered four droughts that produced famine in places like Bihar, and lived through the first oil shock, which saw a QUADrupling of crude oil prices. The...

-The Hindu Rural areas see sharper spurt; WPI inflation races to record 12.94% spurred by rise in fuel, edible oils Retail inflation hit a six-month high of 6.3% in May, thanks to a persistent rise in fuel and edible oil prices, which also played a part in pushing wholesale prices to a record 12.94% inflation in the month, as per data released on Monday. Consumers experienced an inflation of 11.58% for the ‘fuel...

With the rise in Covid-19 daily new cases and daily new deaths since March this year, media reports (please click here and here) on migrant workers returning back to their native places (i.e. places of origin) from migration destinations (i.e. workplaces likes cities and large industrial towns to where the informal and low skilled workers from the marginalised sections of the society migrate seasonally, and sometimes for a longer duration,...