With the rise in Covid-19 daily new cases and daily new deaths since March this year, media reports (please click here and here) on migrant workers returning back to their native places (i.e. places of origin) from migration destinations (i.e. workplaces likes cities and large industrial towns to where the informal and low skilled workers from the marginalised sections of the society migrate seasonally, and sometimes for a longer duration,...

-The Indian Express Never mind what the bhadralok class thinks. The poll campaign has exploded the myth of Bengali exceptionalism. As West Bengal is witnessing the pathology of the prevalent electoral politics, the illusory character of the “cultural capital” the Bengali bhadralok community boasts of is becoming increasingly clear. Yes, this bhadralok class — quite often fixated at the glory of the late 19th and early 20th century Bengal — loves to...

-Livemint.com Politics in India has been based on caste in recent decades. But a rising middle class and increasing inequality within caste groups is paving the way for a class-based faultline. One cliché looms large in every election campaign in India: that caste politics may finally give way to class politics. But as counting begins on the day of the election verdict, caste subsumes every other factor, even in serious analyses of...

-The Hindu Several myths persist about job creation, which can misguide policymaking Jobs are rarely far from the minds of citizenry. Politicians woke up to this fact in the run-up to the Bihar Assembly Elections. It is for the first time that unemployment has become a big issue in an election. This is not surprising. Rising unemployment The economy had been slowing for nine quarters prior to the COVID-19 outbreak. Before the 2019 Lok...

-Newsclick.in The results show how strong the pull of caste identity is. Nothing else explains why JD-U’s vote share did not shrink disastrously. The Bihar Assembly Elections turned out to be a breathlessly close race, with the National Democratic Alliance pipping the Mahagathbandhan or Grand Alliance to the post. Yet the award for man of the match must go to Rashtriya Janata Dal leader Tejashwi Yadav, who took on the combined might...