A Communal Virus and Our Collective Irrationality
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A Communal Virus and Our Collective Irrationality

  Nissim Mannathukkaren The whole world is battling the novel coronavirus. But it seems India is fighting Muslims in the time of coronavirus, if we were to go by the loudest and most popular television channels and social media discourse. “Corona Jihad” was trending on April 1; on April 2, “Muslim means terrorist” was a…

‘Too Soon to Say Lockdown Was Needed,’ Says Modi Economic Adviser
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‘Too Soon to Say Lockdown Was Needed,’ Says Modi Economic Adviser

  Karan Thapar This is an excerpted transcript from the interview given by V. Anantha Nageswaran, a member of the Prime Minister’s Economic Advisory Council, to Karan Thapar. It is a glaring reflection of how economists and elites think in this time of unprecedented crisis. For them, rather than ramp up government spending to alleviate…

India’s Unemployment Rate May Have Shot Up to 23% After COVID-19 Lockdown: CMIE
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India’s Unemployment Rate May Have Shot Up to 23% After COVID-19 Lockdown: CMIE

  Courtesy: The Wire Staff The national lockdown may have led to significant job losses across the country, with the overall unemployment rate hitting over 23% in the last week of March 2020, according to estimates put out by the Centre for Monitoring Indian Economy (CMIE). India currently does not have official high-frequency employment data….

Concerned Citizens’ Response to FM’s COVID 19 Relief Package
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Concerned Citizens’ Response to FM’s COVID 19 Relief Package

Courtesy: The Caravan, 27 March 2020 Emergency measures proposed and endorsed by 635 people only half-met Finance Minister (FM) Nirmala Sitharaman has announced a 1.7 lakh crore package to deal with the economic fallout of the ongoing Covid-19 pandemic. While we welcome that the Union Government is finally addressing this issue, it would have been…

What Doesn’t Add Up in Nirmala Sitharaman’s Relief Package for India’s Poor
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What Doesn’t Add Up in Nirmala Sitharaman’s Relief Package for India’s Poor

Kabir Agarwal, Anuj Srivas How impactful will finance minister Nirmala Sitharaman’s relief package for India’s poorest actually end up being? The Narendra Modi government unveiled the contours of the Rs 1.7 lakh crore package on Thursday, with a promise that it was for people who needed immediate help – like migrant workers, and the urban…

Two Days Into Lockdown, Sitharaman Announces Rs 1.7 Lakh Crore Package to Help Poorest
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Two Days Into Lockdown, Sitharaman Announces Rs 1.7 Lakh Crore Package to Help Poorest

The Wire Staff, 26 March 2020 Finance minister Nirmala Sitharaman on Thursday announced a much-awaited relief package for India’s poor and migrant workers, who have been hit hardest by the 21-day national lockdown that is aimed at tackling the COVID-19 pandemic. The ‘Prime Minister Gareeb Kalyan’ scheme, worth Rs 1.7 lakh crore or slightly less…

We Will Survive the Coronavirus. We Need to Make Sure We Survive Ourselves
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We Will Survive the Coronavirus. We Need to Make Sure We Survive Ourselves

Ashish Kothari What an astonishing slap in humanity’s face, this coronavirus. But the silver lining is that it is also a rude wake up call. I say ‘silver lining’, for at the centre of this is a massive humanitarian crisis of illnesses and deaths –  and for working classes who cannot switch to ‘online’ work,…

Reverse Migration: Why the Long March Home?
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Reverse Migration: Why the Long March Home?

Devinder Sharma, March 31, 2020 “It was poverty that forced me to leave my village, and here I am … I still have no money,” said Sanjay Choudhary, a construction worker in Nagpur, after he undertook an arduous journey to return back to his native village in Garhwa district in Jharkhand, covering a distance of…

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When Muslim Women Became My Saviour

Sandeep Pandey Before the anti-Citizenship Amendment Act, National Register of Citizens and National Population Register dharna at Ghata Ghar was symbolically withdrawn on 23 March morning, I happened to visit the dharna site on 21 March evening with the purpose of sitting their with my spinning wheel or Charkha in support of the women. Immediately…