-Press release by Working Peoples Charter (WPC) Network dated 23rd March, 2021 A statement on the condition of India’s migrant workforce one year after the COVID-19 lockdowns 24 March marks the anniversary of India’s harsh nationwide COVID-19 lockdown when we witnessed an unparalleled impact on the country’s poor, particularly internal migrants who comprise a 140 million-strong workforce. In 2020, India saw the largest urban-rural exodus in its history, with millions of workers...
More »SEARCH RESULT
Migrant workers face debt, job loss and separation from families -Damini Nath
-The Hindu A year after the lockdown, jobs are not only harder to find, they pay less New Delhi/ Noida: Construction sites, industrial clusters, markets and homes in the National Capital Region (NCR) are abuzz with activity, but for the migrant workers who make a living in these spaces, life is far from normal a year after the country was locked down to curb the spread of COVID-19 in March 2020. Almost a...
More »'I Don’t Have the Option to Rent a House': How Migrant Workers Differ From the Urban Poor -Malay Kotal
-TheWire.in The mass exodus of migrant workers from cities after the nationwide lockdown has amplified the housing crisis for migrant workers in cities. ‘Low-income migrants’ in cities have always subsumed under the blanket, but arguably vague, term ‘urban poor’. This categorisation overlooks the mobility dimension of migrant workers’ lives where they are constantly moving between places in search of work, following capital. The government’s own estimates also indicate that with each passing...
More »Odisha Migrant Workers Return To Gruelling Shifts, Poor Wages -Sunaina Kumar
-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...
More »New urban poor in Mumbai -- No demand, self-employed hardest hit: Socha na tha ki haath phailana padega -Mayura Janwalkar and Sadaf Modak
-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...
More »