[In Part One of this article, we examined the restrictions in extending Rs.50 lakh compensation to the next of kin of Covid-19 frontline warriors who died after contracting Covid-19 while on duty. In this second and concluding part, we will try to summarize the first-person accounts of some women health workers—mainly nurses and ASHA workers—on the extreme exploitative working conditions[Read More…]
“Is beemari se bachne ke liye jo hamare dhaal hain jaise hamare doctor, swasthyakarmi, safai karmachari aur police aadi, unka samman karen, unhen sahyog den. In yoddhaon ki karo dekhbhaal to desh jeetega corona se har haal” [Translation: To save ourselves from this disease, those who are our armours…like our doctors, health workers, sanitation workers and police etc., respect them[Read More…]
The impact of the Covid pandemic on Indian companies has not been uniform across all sectors. In fact, the pandemic had come as a boon to some sectors and a bane to others. Despite some initial blips, companies in the healthcare sector and e-commerce companies have gained the most out of the pandemic period. On the other hand, companies in[Read More…]
The halting recovery of the Indian economy from the Covid pandemic received an unexpected blow from the Ukraine war. India’s corporate world is now struggling to cope with this double-trouble that has become a new challenge. In the second part of this series Covid Response Watch traces various trends in the corporate sector during the pandemic. The money kept flowing[Read More…]
Covid impact on India’s corporate sector The halting recovery of the Indian economy from the Covid pandemic received an unexpected blow from the Ukraine war. India’s corporate world is now struggling to cope with this double-trouble that has become a new challenge. This two part series let traces how the Indian corporate sector[1] fared through the pandemic. Before that, a[Read More…]
Can animals get infected with the Covid virus? What are the chances for human-to-animal and animal-to-human transmission of the virus? Among numerous other uncertainties, these two also remained the prominent unanswered questions in the early days after the pandemic set in. There were conflicting news reports. Some fake news reports were also making the rounds. Regarding the origins of the[Read More…]
Agriculture is the only sector of the Indian economy that posted a positive growth of 3.4% in the pandemic year of 2020–21. But this stability in production did not reflect in agricultural prices, especially food prices. The pandemic brought about unprecedented volatility in food prices in both 2020–21 and 2021–22. Besides supply disruptions caused by the lockdowns, some other factors[Read More…]
In the 3–4 months before the Covid pandemic set in early 2020, potato prices were ruling high at around Rs.30–35 per kg in the retail markets. India’s potato farmers who had raised their rabi crop in November 2019 had high hopes of making a good income. But the unexpected lockdown declared on 24 March 2020 resulted in a very sharp[Read More…]
The Covid-19 pandemic spurred a rush in the Indian middle class to get health insurance policies. The Indian government too came up with some new health insurance instruments exclusively to address Covid care—but they remained tokenistic in nature and were nowhere near the scale of response required to tackle the health care challenges posed by the pandemic. Health insurance in[Read More…]
The Covid-19 pandemic spurred a rush in the Indian middle class to get health insurance policies. The Indian government too came up with some new health insurance instruments exclusively to address Covid care—but they remained tokenistic in nature and were nowhere near the scale of response required to tackle the health care challenges posed by the pandemic. Health insurance in[Read More…]
It is the largest employer in India and eighth largest in the world. It is also the fourth longest railway network in the world sprawling out to a total length of 70,000 kms. It runs 21,000 trains and carries 23 million passengers and 3 million tonnes of freight per day. What was the multi-faceted impact of the Covid pandemic[Read More…]
It is the largest employer in India and eighth largest in the world. It is also the fourth longest railway network in the world sprawling out to a total length of 70,000 kms. It runs 21,000 trains and carries 23 million passengers and 3 million tonnes of freight per day. What was the multi-faceted impact of the Covid pandemic on[Read More…]
They are workers but without any formal “employment”. They do work but have no jobs. They might sport Zomato or Swiggy t-shirts and caps. But they are not their workers. Nor are these firms their employers. Some might own their cabs but pay a hefty commission to taxi aggregators like Ola and Uber solely because passengers hire them through these[Read More…]
In the midst of the stressful Covid pandemic autorickshaw workers in Coimbatore have come up with an innovative model for improving incomes of gig workers by forming their own cooperative. They have developed their own app and are executing gig work on their own without having to pay any commission to any corporate-backed, third-party coordinating platform. The Federation of Indian[Read More…]
Written by B.Sivaraman & Kumudini Pati Online classes have become the main mode of learning for millions of school students across India due to the Covid-19 pandemic, with its repeated lockdowns and social distancing measures. The shift however is proving to be extremely painful for families in small towns and rural areas for many reasons, especially high costs of purchasing[Read More…]
When the New York Times recently claimed that the official Covid-19 figures in India grossly understate the true scale of the pandemic in the country the Indian government went ballistic. Based on an analysis, in consultation with over a dozen experts, the NYT put the death toll due to Covid-19 in India at over 5 times the official numbers – making it[Read More…]
Allahabad: “Theek hai yaar. Koi baat nahin![i] Don’t worry. I will make some alternative arrangement”. Nihal Mishra was putting on a brave, courteous face while getting blunt refusals from three of his friends in Delhi, whom he had requested for a place to stay. He was going to Delhi to get his wife admitted at the All India Institute of[Read More…]
Allahabad: The recent images of bloating human bodies floating on the Ganga, with crows and dogs picking on the carcasses have shocked the nation and made headlines around the world. Reports of burial of hundreds of dead bodies in riverside sand outside towns in Uttar Pradesh like Unnao and Kanpur have also surfaced. It is clear that most of these[Read More…]
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Our beloved K.P.Sasi is no more. Filmmaker, cartoonist, writer, mentor, friend and above all tireless activist championing the cause of every underdog, Sasi breathed his last, mid-afternoon this Christmas day – after battling a medical condition for months. I remember the last time I met him, almost exactly a month before he passed away, at the ayurvedic healing center in[Read More…]
Covid rocks India’s federal structure, amidst calls for reform
On 2 June 2021, Odisha Chief Minister Navin Patnaik wrote a letter to all chief ministers urging them to “unite and form a consensus that the Centre should procure Covid vaccines and distribute them free to the States.” With this rallying call, Navin Patnaik, waded into the controversy between the central and state governments over who should foot the bill[Read More…]