-IndiaSpend.com New Delhi: In mid-October, machinist Bipin Ramesh Sahu, 38, was flown back to Surat from his southern Odisha village by his former employer, a textile mill owner. Sahu, among the 6.7 million migrant workers to lose their jobs and return home during the lockdown in India, assumed that his employer’s eagerness to re-employ him meant better living and working conditions in Surat--more humane shifts, safety gear, wage cheques instead of...

Just before Dhanteras and Diwali this year, the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) released the November edition of its monthly bulletin. The latest RBI Monthly Bulletin says that the GDP has contracted by -8.6 percent in the second quarter of fiscal year 2020-21 (i.e. July-September, 2020) as compared to the gross domestic product (GDP) during the corresponding period last year. It may be noted that India’s GDP shrunk by -23.9...

-The Indian Express Baudh’s is a story playing out across the city as the Covid lockdown winds down but small businesses don’t know where the keys to demand are. Mumbai: Their ghar is gone because the Rent cannot be paid so the Baudh family has moved to their karkhana whose owner has given them some time to pay. Seated on its floor in a chawl near Juhu Gally, Anant (8), Arpit (6) and...

-The Hindu These families are on the brink of urban poverty, forced to do what they once thought was impossible — borrowing for their children's school fees, defaulting on EMIs, falling back on Rent, cutting down on necessities. Mumbai: MANY locks in the nation’s financial capital are being opened one by one, new Covid numbers are falling but most doors — or windows — to any opportunity to earn are still firmly...

-Press release by Working Peoples' Charter dated 21st September, 2020 Amidst the micro and macro-economic crisis of the last 5 years, the union government has aggressively pushed the agenda of labour law reforms -- purportedly to simplify India’s ‘complex’ labour legislations, improve the business environment, and augment growth and employment. These changes, driven primarily by the business fraternity, have been aimed at improving India’s ranking in the ‘Ease of Doing Business’...