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Tag Search: “cash transfers”

Pandemic as a lens: Identifying and addressing livelihood vulnerabilities

Based on the findings from a phone survey of around 5,000 Indian workers, the authors explore the impact of the Covid-19 economic lockdown on two forms of livelihood vulnerabilities: employment insecu...

  • Notes from the Field

The pandemic and the package

The government has announced a package of fiscal and monetary policy actions, and broader economic reforms to set the economy back on track after the Covid-19 lockdown. In this post, Sengupta and Vard...

  • Articles

Webinar video: The new Coronavirus and the Indian economy

The global pandemic has created a terrible trade-off for every country between an economic crisis caused by a shutdown of the economic activity and a health crisis and fatalities as the healthcare sys...

  • Videos

India’s Covid-19 lockdown: An interim report

In an earlier paper, Debraj Ray and S. Subramanian had argued that in developing countries like India, a perspective of "lives versus lives" may be needed to evaluate the virtues of a stringent lockdo...

  • Perspectives

Covid-19 relief: Are women Jan Dhan accounts the right choice for cash transfers?

While the relief package announced by the Government of India for Covid-19 rightly complements food rations with cash transfers, the case for using the list of women Jan Dhan bank accounts for the lat...

  • Perspectives

How costly are flawed government responses to Covid-19? An assessment of the migrant crisis

By March-end, countless migrant workers started fleeing India’s locked-up cities and trekking home to their villages amidst the Covid-19 crisis. Sarmistha Pal argues that government’s responses until ...

  • Perspectives

Covid-19 and MSMEs: The ‘identification’ problem

A recent survey of 5,000 micro, small, and medium enterprises (MSMEs) found that 71% of them could not pay salaries to their workers in March 2020 due to the Covid-19 lockdown in India. The government...

  • Perspectives

We need a Marshall Plan to fight Covid-19

There are still a lot of unknowns in the fight against the Covid-19 pandemic, but two robust lessons are clear: we need to pull out all stops to strengthen our healthcare capacity and reinforce social...

  • Perspectives

Covid-19: What can be done immediately to help vulnerable population

With over 80% of India’s workforce employed in the informal sector and one-third working as casual labour, Covid-19's spread and subsequent unplanned lockdowns, have created economic havoc in the live...

  • Perspectives

Economic Survey 2019-20: How does it seek to address challenges of farm sector?

This year’s Economic Survey, the flagship document of the Ministry of Finance, was recently tabled in the Parliament at a time of economic slowdown and rural distress in India. In this post, Sudha Nar...

  • Perspectives

India's farm crisis: Decades old and with deep roots

In this Perspectives piece, Prof. Himanshu argues that the crisis in Indian agriculture today is not a new one; it goes back many years. Therefore, the problems of farmers cannot be addressed by the b...

  • Perspectives

Can Rahul Gandhi’s minimum income guarantee proposal work?

Congress president Rahul Gandhi has promised a minimum income guarantee scheme for the poor if the party is voted to power in the upcoming elections. Discussing the proposal and associated concerns, P...

  • Perspectives