The Covid lockdowns saw thousands of children deprived of schooling across the country and even after resumption of classes many from poorer families have not returned to school. In Bihar’s…
The happiness of 65-year-old Santo Bai, an Adivasi in Madhya Pradesh, knows no bounds. After suffering during the Covid pandemic she is now bursting with happiness because the Mahua flower,…
The centuries old Indian handloom industry, spread across multiple and remote geographical terrains across the country, was in serious crisis for a long time and a combination of demonetization, GST…
“The farmer also wants to live, sir! But he is forced to take a loan. This is done not once, but over and over again. First, to sow the crop,…
Amidst the maze of lanes and by-lanes, it’s an obscure alley in North Calcutta, close to the famous Sobhabazar and Sutanuti, with its incredible, inherited kaleidoscope of architecture with unique…
In November last year the Indian government launched its 'Har Ghar Dastak' Covid-19 inoculation campaign to increase vaccination coverage nationwide. Under the campaign health workers would go door-to-door to vaccinate people eligible…
In March 2020, just before the outbreak of the Covid-19 pandemic, all that 16-year-old Zubeida Ali, a student in Lalwadi village of Rajasthan’s Tonk district wanted most was to be…
11 year old Ruby (name changed) never saw the face of any school. Because her father is a poor farmer cultivating one bigha of land and mother Hansa Devi works…
On 27 February this year, in Maharashtra, about 40 thousand doses of Covid vaccine were dumped in the garbage can. Not only this, in the next five days, a further…
The economy of the impoverished Mallah or boatmen community living in various villages of Shamli district of Uttar Pradesh (UP) received a major jolt during Covid times. Many are stuck in a…
When the COVID-19 pandemic started, there was initially some concern about crowding in Indian prisons. In an overpopulated, confined environment the risk of explosion of an infectious disease is always…
There has been a steep increase in child labour in the country during the Covid pandemic period that shows severe economic distress among large sections of the population. The figures…
Since it started in early 2020 the COVID pandemic has posed great challenges for many with hearing and visual impairments, particularly children. Talking with the help of hands or facial…
On a biting cold day in January this year, the city of Prayagraj witnessed a day long demonstration by a group of cooks employed by the government’s Mid-Day Meal Scheme…
Since the beginning of COVID, most political parties have competed against each other in claiming how they provided relief material to those most affected by the pandemic. While the State…
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.…
The first wave of Covid in India revealed that those running the government were clueless. The second was exposed their sheer incompetence. And now, during the ongoing third wave of…
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.…
As Covid raged across India over the last two years hundreds of thousands of Indian prisoners suffered the most. Under ‘permanent lockdown’ their voices remained unheard behind the walls of…
Soon after the Covid-19 pandemic hit India in March 2020, the imposition of a nationwide lockdown forced millions of desperate migrant workers, deprived of income or security, to return their…
In the thick of the cold winter mist, with a woolen scarf around her face, 25 year old Anju Naik starts her day by knocking on the doors of residents…
Sitting inside a 4x6 feet room of her house, situated in Jaipur's walled city, Afrooza Bano is busy carving the notches on bamboo sticks used to make kites. It's mid-day and…
Painting of Afghan woman by Sarmistha Sarker On a sunny Covid winter day, even while people waited for the third wave to fasten its grip, the Birla Academy of Art…
When the Maharashtra home ministry decided last year to reduce the number of prisoners in the state’s crowded prisons to reduce impact of the third wave of Covid, they were…
As 2021 ended the Government of Rajasthan made a concerted push to increase Covid vaccination rates in the state by announcing a series of disincentives. The unvaccinated it said will…
During the COVID-19 pandemic, the working class suffered the most. And, among the working class, the worst off were those who are not even recognized as the organized working class…
When Chandu, a cloth merchant of Sant Hirdaram Nagar (old name Bairagarh) of Bhopal, got a message on his mobile phone informing him that he had been certified fully vaccinated…
Almost an hour from the bustling railway station of Madhupur in Jharkhand, beyond the vast green landscape and kuccha and pucca roads, lies the small and beautiful Santhal village of…
On 15 January this year Dinesh Uike (40 years), an agricultural labourer, committed suicide by consuming poison in Dapori Khurd village of Amravati district in Maharashtra. He was in critical…
In the bustling roadside market around the small, quaint and laid-back railway station of Jharkhand’s Madhupur, where locals, passenger and express trains crisscross the railway tracks towards Asansol and Burdwan…
The ‘jheli’ is a wooden rake, popular in both rural and urban areas of Rajasthan and its neighbouring states, for its multiple uses as well as low cost. Since early…
Fishermen on the Maharashtra’s Konkan coast are set to lose their earnings for a second consecutive year due to the global Covid pandemic. The repeated lockdowns since early 2020 have…
Uncertainty continues for thousands of information technology sector employees in Bangalore over when they will be able to return to their offices. Since the beginning of the Covid pandemic early…
In March 2020, while activity of all kinds came to a standstill across the country due to the Covid lockdown, the impact was negligible on one industrial sector in…
As the social life and businesses of people in Uttar Pradesh gradually recovers from the Covid-19 catastrophe a question on everyone’s minds is – will the pandemic influence the outcome…
Rajasthan’s over 100 years old Pushkar Mela is one of the most famous and largest camel fairs in the world. Due to the Covid pandemic though, the event has taken a big hit…
It is a picture postcard scene of Goa’s big, best-selling beaches like Calangute, Anjuna and Vagator, overflowing, with Indian tourists herding together, eating and drinking, and frolicking in the sea.…
The financial crisis induced by the Covid lockdowns and closure of public gatherings has severely affected the protection and promotion of more than 375 historical forts, caves, museums and other…
“In the first and second wave of the Covid pandemic, ministers and MLAs were sitting in their homes. They avoided common people and crowds. Had virtual meetings. Continued their rhetoric…
Untimely snowfall, migration of workers following terror attacks and the overall political uncertainty has added to the woes of apple farmers in the Kashmir Valley, already reeling from the impact of…
On 28 October, over a 100 interns at the All India Institute of Medical Sciences, Bhopal went on a day and night hunger strike. They were demanding that the hospital…
Even though the outbreak of the global Covid epidemic seems to be slowing down these days, its ill effects on society and families are now emerging, giving rise to new…
Waste, sanitation workers and safai karamcharis across the country have been perhaps the worst-hit community among India’s vast unorganized labour force due to the Covid pandemic and repeated lockdown. When…
On the 4th of October, 2021, an attempt was made to kill a woman in Bhilwara district of Rajasthan by calling her a ‘witch’. The victim is a resident of…
In September 2019, a month after the Abrogation of article 370 in Jammu and Kashmir, Bashir Yatoo , reached out to children stuck at home in the midst of a…
After making losses on their vegetable crops throughout the Covid period farmers in Madhya Pradesh are making big losses due to falling prices of cotton. Vegetable crops have been destroyed…
When the COVID-19 lockdown began in West Bengal in 2020, a number of students from Jadavpur University of Kolkata came together to stand up with the people in the face…
Shimla: The lockdown reached the remote Lahaul-Spiti district of Himachal Pradesh before the Covid pandemic did. Farmers, who suddenly had no way to send their produce outside their region,…
The Basor community of Madhya Pradesh and Uttar Pradesh are still reeling with the losses of the pandemic as it brought their business - making household items of bamboo -…
They are called ‘chitmahals’ or ‘paper palaces’. For decades, the people living in these twilight zones on the border between India and Bangladesh have been searching for citizenship, constitutional rights…
With 22 million passengers every day the Indian railways is second only to China globally in terms of the number of people transported. Since the onset of the Covid pandemic…
On 3rd October 2021 Mamata Banerjee, the incumbent chief minister of West Bengal – with a reputation as street-fighting politician, won a by-election at Bhabanipur, to secure her chief ministerial…
The ongoing Covid pandemic has affected the Raika and Rebari community in Rajasthan, known to herd camels for a livelihood for centuries. The Raika community, who are pastoralists, have been…
Dhanbad: Ray Talkies in Jharkhand’s Dhanbad has screened many a Bollywood blockbuster, seeing its packed audiences ride the emotions since 1952. Its filmy fever, however, was broken by the Covid…
With Indian Army recruitment exams halted for over a year and a half, several aspirants who had been preparing for years are faced with bitter disappointment at the lost opportunity…
Even as the fear of the third Covid wave lingers, for the sex workers in Kolkata and other districts of Bengal, life is just about limping back to a fragmented,…
Bhopal: Sundari, a wind-instrument is held in high regard among musicians of Maharashtra, as the younger sister of the better-known Shehnai. But sadly, the Sundari-organists in Solapur, are still reeling…
On May 4th of 2021, as the second wave of COVID-19 raged in the hills of Darjeeling, a group of youth came up with an initiative called “We Shall Overcome”…
Shimla: When restrictions were imposed last year to contain the coronavirus, Ajay Rattan (38) faced the same troubles other farmers did. To begin with, fertilisers and pesticides were not available.…
Of the many institutions affected by the Covid pandemic and repeated lockdowns, the case of public libraries closing down is the most saddening. In Maharashtra, such libraries were a staple…
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