Industrial and other Manmade Disasters

Jharkhand government launches three schemes to revive rural economy under the MGNREGA

When migrants headed home after Covid-19 lockdown 1.0, Sarojini was suddenly caught off-guard. She decided against moving, after an initial urge to leave for her village in Samastipur, Bihar. Her two sons stay with her at Delhi, doing daily wage labour work, while she works as a domestic help. After eating frugally for the first few days, and unable to access dry rations provided by the state, they came across cooked meals at a feeding centre, but the queue was endless.

IMD revises monsoon calendar for the country

Reshamben, Manguben and Naseemben, strong women leaders of Vanita Shakti Mahila Sangathan and Ekta Mahila Sangathan, have always argued that government ration shops under the public distribution system should purchase all essential foodgrains from the local area, to the extent possible.

While the COVID-19 pandemic is putting humanity through its most testing times, there are stories of hope, resilience, and unwavering human spirit. We have seen volunteers from the general public, NGOs and other community-based organisations, governments, philanthropies and private entities coming together in unprecedented ways. Samerth Charitable Trust is one such organisation that has been on the forefront, supporting the most affected families across Gujarat and Chhattisgarh through their relief work.

Raj Kumar, 32, a daily wager employed at a factory in Delhi had barely a thousand rupees in his wallet when he readied to rush back to his village in Halia block of Mirzapur, Uttar Pradesh. On a normal April afternoon, he took the highway that leads to his district hearing about the 21-day lockdown. It took him over a week, as he walked down all the way to his village fearing starvation amid the Covid-19 crisis. Kumar trudged hundreds of kilometres along deserted highways by foot along with a few of his acquaintances.

With Covid-19 spreading its wings across the world, the impact on quality of life and access to basic human rights will be felt exceedingly more in the global south. It is the nature of disasters, to bare the inherent socio-economic inequities in societies, that are invisibilized during normal times. The Covid-19 pandemic, an unprecedented public health disaster, is a case in point.

The Covid-19 pandemic has wreaked havoc worldwide and India continues to be in the line of fire. While cases continue to rise, India is also experiencing a crisis of another kind, that of the lockdown affecting the livelihoods of a large number of workers from the informal sector.

The Covid-19 pandemic has wreaked havoc worldwide and India continues to be in the line of fire. While cases continue to rise, India also is experiencing a crisis of another kind, that of the lockdown affecting the livelihoods of a large number of workers from the informal sector.

As the Covid-19 pandemic reaches new corners of the country, the NGO community in India has been preparing itself to respond to the unexpected needs that the crisis is producing. DHAN Foundation, a professional development organisation working in several states of India with the communities has begun to develop a strategy. The organisation, which works especially among the poor and disadvantaged households, is already scaling up its response to Covid-19.