The need for higher allocation for the social safety net programmes (SSNPs) has never been felt so badly than during the ongoing pandemic. Historically, given the resource constraint, Bangladesh could not manage to allocate the required amount of resources for SSNPs compared to other regions of the world. In South Asian countries, the average allocation for SSNPs is about 4 percent of their gross domestic product (GDP). The East Asian and Pacific countries spend about 8 percent of GDP on SSNPs while the European countries allocate about 20 percent of their GDP on social protection.
We are making slow progress in this case. The allocation in terms of amount has increased over time, so has the size of our economy. But the SSNP allocation as a percentage of the GDP has remained almost the same for a long time. For example, in FY2011, the share of SSNPs in our budget was 3 percent of GDP and in FY2021 also, the allocation for SSNPs is equivalent to only 3 percent of the GDP. In terms of
Making the Modern Slum: The Power of Capital in Colonial Bombay
by Sheetal Chhabria
The Coolieâs Great War: Indian Labour in a Global Conflict, 1914â1921
by Radhika Singha
Oxford University Press, 2020, 256 pp.
Last May, a five-minute BBC Hindi video went viral in India. In the clip, the journalist Salman Ravi interviews a group of migrant workers walking back to their home villages during the Indian governmentâs nationwide COVID-19 lockdown. Fighting back tears, one of the men recalls being beaten by police along the route. His two young children, groggy from hunger and the heat, sit on a broken bicycle attached to a cart that holds the familyâs possessions. When another man, barely in his twenties and holding a sleeping toddler, admits that he is barefoot because his sandals had broken, Ravi gives him the sneakers off his feet.
Scores of houses damaged as heavy rains lash Kasaragod, other parts of Kerala; cracks develop in Sea Bridge
Scores of houses damaged as heavy rains lash Kasaragod, other parts of Kerala; cracks develop in Sea Bridge
News Network
May 15, 2021
Kasargaod, May 15: Scores of houses were damaged, trees uprooted and power supply disrupted for hours across Kerala as incessant rains and strong winds continue to lash the state on Saturday even as severe sea incursion disrupted normal life in the coastal areas.
According to the latest update of the Indian Meteorological Department (IMD), a red alert, indicating the possibility of extremely heavy rains, was sounded in five northern districts of Malappuram, Kozhikode, Wayanad, Kannur and Kasaragod.
Harsh Mander: A lesson in how to end the mass suffering unleashed by India’s first lockdown
A report by the collective Hunger Watch reveals the extent of continuing hunger caused by state policy, and recommends ways to end the distress. 2 hours ago A migrant worker feeds her child water while they wait in a queue for transport to reach Ahmedabad railway station to board a train to their home state of Uttar Pradesh. | Amit Dave/Reuters
A spectacularly uncaring, unaccountable state has abandoned Indians to their fate. Bodies are piling up, pyres burn late into the night, and corpses are buried in anonymous mass graves. Loved ones are choking to death because their governments failed to secure them oxygen. Vaccines have fallen short in a country that prides itself as the vaccine factory of the world. Black marketeering thrives in life-saving hospital beds, medicines and oxygen concentrators. Confused lockdowns have once again spurred the panicked exodus