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 Modi government’s indifference to the plight of the poor is now pathological. The Indian government’s rhetoric about ‘Amrit Kaal,’ an era of plenty, masks a consistent denial of the fact that the country is caught in a spiralling hunger and livelihoods crisis, the worst in its independent history, and one largely created by official policies. The 2022-2023 Union Budget[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...]
Even while a draconian lockdown was underway in late March 2020, and as thousands of migrant workers and their emaciated families escaped the pandemic in a helpless long march on miscellaneous highways, hungry and thirsty and holding tattered sacks as their only belongings, and even as the upper and middle classes in the affluent zones of Noida and Delhi, or,[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...]
It is well-nigh impossible to obtain accurate information in a country where data is routinely fudged or camouflaged, be it the number of deaths due to the killer virus, or, be it the tragic index of poverty and mass unemployment. However, some figures have been trickling in from various sources, and from this scattered realm of statistics one can figure[Read More...]
Note: In this series of articles senior journalist Amit Sengupta examines the role of the Indian media during the two years of the Covid pandemic. Part One: Locked up during Lockdown Even as the affluent and the middle classes were rejoicing the banging of thalis and utensils on their balconies to beat an incipient virus which had just arrived in[Read More...]
Omicron is the name given to a mutant of SARS-CoV-2 first reported in South Africa. Subsequently, several other countries, including India, have reported cases of this variant. Among those infected by this variant were a good many who had been vaccinated or had been infected by earlier Covid variants. Early data on the new variant show two trends: that there[Read More...]
Origin: Unknown Crime record: Unknown Armed or unarmed: Unknown Capabilities: Unknown Motive: Unknown Category: Extremely dangerous! If that were a profile of a criminal suspect, the cop writing it would have been laughed out of his job long ago for coming to such a drastic conclusion based on zero evidence. That however is not a police report, but the current[Read More...]
