After the outbreak of COVID-19 in China during early January this year and its dissemination globally within a few days, health experts have suggested ways to check its spread exponentially among the rest of the population. In the age of internet connectivity, work-from-home and self-isolation have been advised as solutions to ensure social distancing and avoid large-scale social gatherings. Experts have asked governments and private enterprises to keep people at...

-TheWire.in Breman's central finding about the close coexistence of capitalism and labour bondage contains remarkable nuggets of hope for transcendence. For more than half a century, Jan Breman has diligently, insightfully and creatively studied the life of labour in India, and specifically in Gujarat. His searing descriptions and acute analyses based on painstaking fieldwork and a broad but clear theoretical framework have informed our understanding of the conditions of rural – and urban...

-India Spend Mumbai: Poverty and lack of opportunity in their hometowns drove 93 million Indians from disadvantaged castes and tribes in 2011 to migrate to other areas within their states in the hope of securing education or employment. However. they continue to face social segregation, labour market discrimination and barriers to accessing the most basic services, finds an analysis of Census data and research studies by India Migration Now, a Mumbai-based...

-The Indian Express The start of the sugarcane season in Maharashtra is marked by the seasonal migration of around 7-8 lakh labourers from Marathwada and North Maharashtra to the mills in various parts of the state. Pune: Maharashtra’s sugarcane crushing is all set to extend by at least a fortnight as mills complain of acute shortage of harvesting labourers. Mills say that at present around 15-20 per cent less labourers have turned...

-The Indian Express Viable solutions to PDS portability are being ignored in the push for Aadhaar. Migrants’ woes are often invoked in making a case for portability of benefits in the public distribution system (PDS). Most recently, an article (‘A hundred small steps’, IE, September 26) did just that. However, in many cases of short-term seasonal migration (a dominant form in India), only one or two of the household members migrate,...