-TheFederal.com Dalberg research finds women from low-income sections were first to lose jobs and last to regain them due to COVID disruptions While the pandemic was tough on the nation’s poor, the women from the low-income section were dealt a harder blow, research has revealed. As a cash crunch hit household expenses, women’s nutrition, health and employment were the worst hit and the last to recover. A study by consulting firm Dalberg —...

-The Hindu Business Line The development economist, now part of Tamil Nadu’s Economic Advisory Council, says that public expenditure on health is just 0.6 per cent of the state domestic product, one of the lowest ratios among Indian states * Universal quality education, health care and social security are still distant goals * A well-designed system of emergency cash transfers would be quite useful in this situation of recurrent crises, which may last...

-The Indian Express The cash crunch is hindering the state governments’ relief efforts at every step. Centre must urgently provide additional foodgrain to poorest states for expanding PDS coverage. As the monsoon advances, there is an urgent need to consider what can be done to prevent hunger during the rainy season — the hardest time of the year for poor families in large parts of rural India. The monsoon is expected to...

-Hindustan Times Many analysts have underlined that the BJP’s below-par performance in the Maharashtra and Haryana assembly elections reflected concern, among other factors, about the economy, which slumped to a growth rate of 6% in the three months to June 30, the slowest pace in over six years. The government has already spent nearly 80% of its full-year budget for the flagship rural job guarantee programme, top officials said on Friday,...

-The Hindu Business Line The government must simplify and rationalise GST, kickstart rural consumption, revive agriculture and tackle the lack of credit for capital creation, says former PM Former Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, an eminent economist himself, feels that the Narendra Modi-led government needs to come out of its habit of headline management and address the economic challenges which the country is facing today. “We cannot afford to deny that India is facing...