The October 2020 issue of Thinking Aloud focuses on “COVID-19 and Development Challenges”. The first-page article titled “COVID-19 and development challenges” emphasizes that COVID-19 has brought about an unprecedented crisis in human history in terms of its dimension and scale. This crisis involves not only pandemic related health hazard but also a deep economic crisis, and social distress in terms of large scale job loss, a sharp rise in poverty and vulnerability, and widening inequality. It is also important to note that impacts in some other areas (like education) are still unfolding. The article also analyses the factors that make the effects of COVID-19 pandemic very different from those of past pandemics and the associated development challenges. The second and third pages of this issue present three more articles. The article titled “COVID-19 impacts on the children in Bangladesh: A Life-Cycle-Deficit approach” analyzes the precarious impacts of COVID-19 on the consumption of the deficit generations – children and elderly. The article concludes that adequate provision of social pension is the key to the welfare of the children in Bangladesh due to the high https://bes.org/valium-online/ unemployment and falling income in the context of the pandemic. The article titled “The changing nature of work in the context of Bangladesh and its implications for COVID-19” discusses the impact of COVID-19 on the employment and earnings of the labour force of Bangladesh through analyzing various national labour force survey data. The article suggests that, apart from private investment and efficient implementation of the incentive packages, addressing the issues regarding skill mismatch will be crucial in the long run to mitigate the adverse impacts of the pandemic. The article titled “Remittances in the time of pandemic: patterns and future challenges for selected countries” analyzes the trends and patterns of remittance during the COVID-19 pandemic and highlighted the disproportionate degree of vulnerability faced by the migrants. The article stresses the importance of long-term policies for repatriating and safe-guarding the migrant workers from such future events. The fourth page presents the details of the SANEM International Development Conference (SIDC) 2020, to be held on 1-3 October 2020.
