'I'll give it to the vaccine manufacturers without guarantees, take the payment in advance and give me the supplies.' 'The moment you give me one lot of supply, I'll give you more.'
'Some are doing one vaccination with one mobile number and the second with another.' 'Creating more accounts will not multiply the number of slots.'
The cover provided under the Centre's Pradhan Mantri Suraksha Bima Yojana, which is a vital safety net for them, ended almost a year back on May 31, 2020. Ever since, there hasn't been much progress on the higher insurance coverage of Rs 5 lakh promised under the newly launched Pradhan Mantri Matsya Sampada Yojana, reports Sanjeeb Mukherjee.
As India looks to scale up use of technology in agriculture, a recent study has found that with just 2 per cent of the cultivators in India using mobile applications for farm-related activities and real-time alerts, adoption of tech solutions such as Internet of Things (IoT) remains at a nascent stage. It also found almost 90 per cent of the existing start-ups and tech-based companies have solutions that are focused only on pre-harvest operations and not on post-harvest which has a higher investment potential due to the presence of big companies. In post-harvest operations, the study, Titled, IoT Adoption in Indian agriculture, that was conducted by industry body Nasscom along with Cisco India among more than 180 enterprises and 40 agritech start-ups found that unclear Return on Investments (RoI) is a big stumbling block for adoption of tech solutions like IoT.
Surface temperatures have increased rapidly during the past century, leading to an increase in the frequency and intensity of tropical storms in the Arabian Sea, reports Sanjeeb Mukherjee.
The intensity of rainfall is likely to increase with the likelihood of very heavy falls at a few places and extremely heavy falls at isolated places on May 15, reports Sanjeeb Mukherjee.
Shortage of ICU beds, oxygen, ventilators, vaccines, doctors, nurses and crematorium space in India has dominated headlines around the world in the past few weeks with Covid-19 cases surging beyond control and the government failing to deliver. Yes, election rallies, Kumbh Mela, blatant flouting of social distancing and mask protocols coupled with a messy vaccination process are said to be responsible for the health crisis of colossal proportions that India is facing today. But an analysis of Budget speeches made by finance ministers over 75 years also offers a glimpse of how low on the priority list healthcare has featured for the political class and policy-makers, which is a significant reason for the current situation.
They say that a stimulus package may not be necessary because, unlike last year's total lockdown, public transport, including the railways and airlines, is running and the restrictions on movement are localised and, in some cases, are partial rather than total.
MGNREGA scheme: A significant Rs 17,370.58 crore has been carried forward over to the next financial year as unpaid dues as demand for work continued unabated for the scheme in rural areas.
Becoming a unicorn is surely a marker for a company in its growth story, but it's not a major achievement nor is it a turning point of any significant worth.
'Ultimately, we have to understand that we don't have the supply at the population scale. 'Therefore, it has to be prioritised.' 'That's what the government has done.'
With the farmers' protest against the three new laws and in support of legalising the minimum support price (MSP) going strong, state governments have announced a slew of measures in their annual Budgets to placate farmers. The Centre kicked things off in the Union Budget by assuring farmers that the MSP would continue and coming out with a report card to demonstrate its commitment. However, these efforts don't seem to have yielded tangible results. In their respective Budgets, states chose to go a step further by announcing a variety of measures.
While the Constitution makes everyone in India eligible to work anywhere in the country, states have used legal loopholes to frame laws.
'Sure, we are teenagers who are doing this part time, but we feel we are making some sort of an impact.'
Anybody over 50 years of age or with co-morbidities can get a date, place and time of choice for getting the vaccine shots.
Demoralising the private companies and disregarding their contribution won't do any good to the country or its youth as our experience has shown that private enterprises in mobile manufacturing has lead to every poor family owning a mobile phone now, while the country's private sector in the pharmaceutical space has been serving humanity through vaccines and medicines during Covid times, Modi said.
'People on the wait list will be accommodated for vaccination when the scheduled beneficiaries don't turn up.'
The survey showed that women workers fared worse than men when it came to employment recovery (53 per cent versus 57 per cent) and urban areas have been much worse hit despite a quicker bounce back.
Nivedita Mookerji explains why a timely rollout of 5G may not be easy in India.