-The Hindu 20% of people demanding work have been denied; even higher on ground, say workers. Having run through 74% of its Labour budget under the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (MGNREGA) at the halfway point of the year, and expecting the demand to go up still further in a pandemic year, Bihar has asked the Centre for an additional six crore persondays of work to be added to its...

-The Hindu There is a strong case to attribute a more robust responsibility to platform companies and the State The Code on Social Security Bill, 2020, for the first time in Indian law, attempted to define ‘platform work’ outside of the traditional employment category. It says: “Platform work means a work arrangement outside of a traditional employer-employee relationship in which organisations or individuals use an online platform to access other organisations or...

-Scroll.in A large section of migrant workers surveyed who want to return have a single earning member, with family sizes ranging from four to eight dependents. “I was very scared. What kind of a disease is this? How will I manage with my small children here? Whatever happens I will never return to Surat again.” Durgabai, an Adivasi woman migrant worker from Udaipur, Rajasthan, was recalling her horrendous experience during the Covid-19 lockdown...

-Down to Earth Creation of unregulated private points of sale will only ensure that the produce continues to be sold as before — at below MSP and without any government support More than 86 per cent farmers in India own or cultivate on less than two acres of land and have little surplus to sell. They are the victims of middlemen (arthiya) at the mandis (local exchange markets) and are forced, by...

-The Indian Express Railways has introduced clone trains to replicate services with a long waiting list. Out of the 40 such trains, around 24 are from stations in Bihar. Even as the Opposition in Bihar tries to make the plight of migrant workers an election issue, train passenger data shows high occupancy rates on routes connecting the state with destinations that rely heavily on migrant Labour.  The demand has been such that...