-The Hindu The government must ensure that the spectre of SARS-CoV-2 is not replaced by the spectre of hunger The Central government has asked States to seal borders to prevent lakhs of workers, who have been rendered jobless overnight with no guarantee of wages and shelter, from reaching their villages. The workers are to be herded into quarantine zones. These atrocious actions amount to a mass criminalisation of the labour force of...

-The New Indian Express Being jobless and stranded, migrants workers are not only struggling to make ends meet but are now also fighting a stigma as 'virus' carriers. New Delhi: On Monday night, 23-year-old Mahesh Damor, along with five other migrant workers, realised they have no source of income to rely on in Gujarat’s Surat. So they decided to walk - over 300 km from Surat to his village in Jhalod taluka in...

-The Hindu Business Line Suppressing data that point to low growth, rising joblessness and poverty impedes effective policymaking in a crisis Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman, in her Budget speech, said “data is the new oil” and stressed on the credibility of data to combat the difficulties in real-time monitoring of the Indian economy. She even proposed building data centre parks throughout the country so that skilful incorporation of data in every step...

-Newsclick.in joblessness is zooming, inflation is at six-year high led by food inflation, exports are down further, industrial production is stagnant and investment is at a standstill. In the last six months or so, the Modi government has supposedly been paying close attention to the sinking economy, with a flurry of meetings, announcements of freebies to corporates, fervent assurances to markets and budget shenanigans to supposedly keep the deficit in check and...

-United Nations News Around half a billion people work fewer paid hours than they would like, or are not getting enough access to paid work, shows a study published by the International Labour Organization (ILO) on Monday, which also forecasts that unemployment will rise by about 2.5 million this year. After nine years of relatively stable global unemployment, the World Employment and Social Outlook: Trends 2020 puts the rising jobless numbers down...