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According to the 2023 World Press Freedom Index rankings by the RSF, India ranks 161 out of 180 countries. One of the important indicators that the index bases the ranking on is the level of violence against the journalists and their overall safety. During the COVID-19 pandemic, the Indian government cracked down on the press by reprimanding any form of dissent regarding their policies. This has resulted in journalists from various parts of the country being arrested, detained, and harassed. The much-debated Epidemic Diseases Act of 1897 and Disaster Management Act, 2005 were implemented to invoke curbs to contain the spread of coronavirus in India. The paper examines the consequences of the infodemic on the safety of journalists in the context of declining press freedom in the country in the context of the aforementioned acts. The analysis of cases focuses on highlighting how the laws introduced to "contain" the spread of the virus has been used as a tool to gatekeep the truth regarding the implementation of coronavirus policies by way of stifling the voice of journalists. The analysis reveals how various legal, political, and economic factors contribute to the lack of safety of journalists in the country. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

COVID-19 has disrupted the normal course of production and livelihood activities across the world. This paper examines the short-term impact of this pandemic on one such strategically important sector, the construction industry of India. This study employs an event study approach to empirically study the market performance and response trends of the construction industry of India to the COVID-19 pandemic. The study finds that COVID-19 has negatively impacted the sector as reflected in the investors' response during the pandemic window. Through further empirical analysis, we also find that this sector has been affected more vis-à-vis other similar industries. In addition, the study also highlights some broad recommendations and proposes a process framework with prescriptive strategies for relevant stakeholders to smoothen the post-COVID recovery process. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper analyzes the efficacy and skepticism surrounding the economic stimulus package announced by the Indian authorities in response to the Covid-19 pandemic in 2020. While the end of the pandemic is yet to be on the horizon, countries across the world have been undertaking economic stimulus packages of varied nature, depth, and quantum. A scrutiny of these packages show that India has been cautious in formulating policy measures and balancing inter-temporal objectives. The disaggregated economic stimulus package in India belies the justification of it being an adequate stimulus in managing the mammoth crisis, especially when the authorities had resorted to more deferred spending measures while the need of the hour was direct fiscal spending. Specifically, this study argues that the causes behind the fiscal conservativeness might be linked to India's twin deficits in the fiscal and current account fronts, along with the fear of a potential capital flight and a possible adverse response by the foreign investors. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper presents the current status of Indian smart cities and examines their preparedness and response to the COVID-19 outbreak. The study focuses on implemented & ongoing projects under the Smart City Mission of the Government of India, which have contributed significantly to controlling the pandemic along with other channels. The study finds that modern cities in both developed and developing countries were not well-prepared to deal with the emergency situations and struggled in providing a satisfactory response during the pandemic. The analysis of primary and secondary data has shown that digital surveillance and movement control through integrated control command centers (ICCC) were the most useful projects in monitoring the COVID-19 cases. However, the lack of technology integration in smart cities hinders the effective usage of implemented projects. Thus, the study recommends integrated network-based applications that include healthcare, essential services, mobility, and movement across smart cities in India. The proposed framework is expected to provide the much-needed alignment at the policy, objective, and implementation levels of smart city framework designs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In a global pandemic, containment became a major concern after confronting such a large scale spread of COVID-19 infection all over the world. Many agencies are devoted to analytically understand how practicing social distance minimize the impact of major outbreaks of infections at large scale. Nearly all strategies are based on isolating the entire country or total lockdown in primary phase, while less attention has been paid to other alternative interventions during the process. This paper discusses the challenges in maintaining an effective social alteration method, social distancing followed by self-isolation in India. People are facing psychological challenges during the practice of Social distancing method. The paper explores how social distancing has been used to minimize crowd interactions and prevent the spread of disease within groups of people in India. Lastly, the main focus is theoretical discussion with conceptual understanding of the protection practices in India on a daily basis and challenges faced in social, medical to professional dimensions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic has necessitated medical centers across the world to deliver healthcare through telemedicine. We discuss the adoption, delivery of telemedicine services at a tertiary care center and patient satisfaction involving 456 patients in south India. Most respondents had sought telemedicine care at the department of Medicine (16.23%). The maximum satisfaction was reported by patients in OBG (100%). The responses were generally positive across all the age groups. The paper offers insights on best practices adopted at the center, lessons learnt, and provides recommendations for health care systems offering telemedicine during COVID-19 times. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Covid-19 pandemic of 2020-21 has acted as an inflection point, exposing the fragility of liberal democracy in India, already beleaguered by the rise of majoritarian populism since 2014, buttressed by a process of expansion of bureaucratic power and autocratic legalism while marginalizing the processes of political accountability – étatisation, and normalization of state violence. The combined impact of such developments has been an erasure of basic rights to life and livelihood for the poor, rooted not only in state incapacity but also in state acquiring impunity for its acts of coercion and violence against its own citizens. Many of these processes have come into stark focus during the Covid-19 pandemic, but have longer histories and are likely to have impact far beyond the pandemic. The paper examines some of these processes with the help of three interlinked but conceptually distinct strands: (a) étatisation and suspension of politics; (b) (en)forcement of a new normal during the health emergency; and (c) erasure of right to life and livelihood. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The de-focalisation of reporting and the focalisation of post-truth ideology is antithetical to the tenets of democracy. It reverts to the traditional centralised propagation of one truth, one reality, and one perspective while contracting, negating, or antagonising the possibility of alternative and parallel narratives. The right wing has created a narrative of suspicion, which is based on the conviction that anything deviating from the traditional cultural patterns is a contamination of the ethos of one's own native values, a deviation from the nativity, and hence an influence that needs to be disposed of. The ongoing Covid pandemic has magnified the narrative of post-truth through the use of sensationalism as an effective modus operandi. The blinding of the truth is rampant as news outlets are being guarded by right-wing gatekeepers and sensationalism is used to reflect the surging emotions of a public already gripped by a precarious reality. This paper examines the three primary and seemingly independent threats to democracy during the pandemic in India: de-focalisation of reporting, coerced homogeneity based on religion and language, and sensationalism. It addresses the question of how adversity is turned into a breeding ground for demagoguery. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In 2020 editor-in-chief (Andrew Malekoff) issued a special call for papers for group work stories on pandemic 2020. Among the 28 stories accepted for the series there were 16 from India, 9 from the United States, 2 from Canada and 1 from Israel. General submissions from the U.S., Canada and Israel were typical for the journal. Atypical are submissions from India. Rather than publish the stories in one special issue of the Journal, he decided to spread them out over several issues through 2022. In the course of organizing the special series (with a December 2021 deadline) he continued communication with a few of the authors from India, with particular interest and concern in the deteriorating situation as 2021 unfolded. Although the present commentary is not about group work per se, it is an update by Ajay Saini, Nancy and Andrew Malekoff on the current state of affairs in India, with some contrast to the situation in the U.S., that offers continuing context for the stories in the series. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We examine the impact of the recent restrictions/bans imposed by several nations on air travel to India in the light of the increasing number of infections amid the second wave of covid-19. We employ the standard event study method on a sample of 34 airline stocks across seven nations to find that the recent restrictions/bans on air travel significantly impact the global airline industry, although the country-specific impacts are not similar. We find that the post-event reaction in all nations has been different from those evidenced during the global pandemic declaration. We are the first to examine these impacts during the current wave of the pandemic. It contributes to the literature on the effects of the pandemic on the global airline industry. Further, it also provides practical explanations to the investors on how the airline stocks react to the persistence of the pandemic. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

COVID-19 has destabilized economies, lives all over the globe with devastating impacts. Physical and mental health suffered hugely due to this pandemic. Moreover, educational institutes were forced to shift from offline to online mode. This study aims to identify critical societal constructs which got impacted due to the COVID-19 pandemic in India and Bangladesh. Further, a comparative analysis has been carried out to assess these impacts between these two countries from a social science point of view. A cross-sectional study has been conducted through a structured questionnaire based on pilot study. Google Survey form link of questionnaire was active from March 15, 2020 to July 14, 2020 in which 1023 responses were received with a response rate of 54%. After the elimination of missing responses, 802 complete responses were finally coded on 48 variables including demographic profile of the respondents. Factor analysis is used to identify critical constructs of the study whereas hypothesis testing to carry out for comparative understanding. The study found that COVID-19 pandemic has severely impact on psychological, educational, economic, and social aspects of both countries whereas Bangladesh has significant adverse impact than India. Economic stimulus program such as tax exemption, EMI moratoriums, mental health training, E-learning, low interest rate of soft loan disbursement are noteworthy requirement to overcome the adverse impact of COVID-19. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The purpose of the present study was to explicate the factors determining customers' intention to use budgeting apps since the outbreak of COVID-19 pandemic. A cross-sectional survey in South India was conducted to collect data from 285 FinTech users. The data were analyzed using partial least square regression to estimate path coefficients and the PROCESS macro technique to identify moderation effects. Firstly, app engagement and self-efficacy were found to have a positive effect on the intention to use budgeting apps. Secondly, individuals who use FinTech services less frequently and those who use it to pay for a variety of expenses were found to have a greater effect on usage intentions of customer engagement, perceived trust, and perceived ease of use. Therefore, customization, real-time suggestions, providing tools for data visualization, smart data insights, and artificial intelligence-based recommendations and advice would assist customers in prudence money management. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic was an entirely new challenge for the entire nation of India. As black clouds of poverty and unemployment hovered over the marginalized sections of the society, the faulty criminal justice system totally neglected its vulnerable under-trial prisoners. This story is about how one group – Ambedkar Group, endeavored to assist the highly stigmatized and silenced under-trial prisoners, who had been released on bail prior to the pandemic and nationwide lockdown. They had been left on their own with no support system or resources to survive. The Ambedkar Group decided to take up their cause. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]