-Hindustan Times To enable their return to cities, improve wages, living conditions, safety net. Coercion won’t work Migrant workers are like nowhere people. Yet, they are everywhere. From high-rises to highways, who builds them? It is a silent army of migrant workers, working day and night with no job security, no social safety net, and poor living conditions — yet, theirs are not the names we see on the billboards or the...
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Why don’t we see the women? The untold story of Covid-19 migration -Ipsita Sapra
-The Indian Express Will this pandemic change women migrant's relationship with cities? Will it limit the geographies and spatial range that women choose to explore? If migration had a face, would it be a male one? Think about the picture of migrants in the Bandra station or at Delhi Bus Stand? Why weren’t there any women in the frame? This article is an attempt to steer the gaze to the women question in...
More »India must enhance fiscal support for COVID-19 relief and rebuilding -Jonathan Coutinho and Amit Basole
-The Hindu The trend across developing countries is to give State governments as much discretion as possible India urgently needs to increase fiscal support for COVID-19 relief and rebuilding. Among comparable developing countries with similar Gross Domestic Product (GDP) per capita, India has spent the least as a share of its GDP. While the Central government has announced measures amounting to 0.8% of GDP, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) estimates that State-level relief...
More »Recent reports predict gloomy days ahead for the overall economy
Most reports and studies by official agencies, international think tanks and private entities indicate the cataclysmic impact of the coronavirus pandemic on the economy and society. They anticipate that lockdowns imposed by various countries across the globe to reduce the exponential diffusion of COVID-19 (i.e. for flattening the curve by social distancing and quarantines) would adversely affect economic growth and disrupt supply chains in most sectors, on top of causing...
More »By revealing magnitude of migrant worker phenomenon, COVID-19 points to rural distress -Christophe Jaffrelot and Hemal Thakker
-The Indian Express According to the 2011 census, 3.5 million migrants who moved within the last one year stated economic reasons for migration. The corresponding numbers for the 2001 and 1991 census, were, respectively, 2.2 and 1.4 million. The COVID-19 crisis is affecting rural India at a time when agriculture is already in a precarious situation. The thousands of migrant workers who have returned to their villages since the lockdown used to...
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