-The Hindu SWAN, which relaunched its helpline in April, releases findings based on over 8,000 callers Bengaluru: Migrant workers, one of the more vulnerable groups left in lurch during the national lockdown called by the Centre last year, are facing another crisis during the second wave of COVID-19. This time around, the problem is compounded by a lack of savings, which they used up last year. Around 92% of the country’s workforce who...

-IndiaSpend.com Migrant workers in different states have been struggling to find work, wages and rations, say activists and researchers. The Public Distribution System must be universalised, they say, and free rations must be provided for at least six more months. Bengaluru: Sudhir Paswan, 29, is back to square one--in his village in Bihar's Muzaffarpur district, counting his losses. It has been more than a week since he returned, after failing to secure...

-Leaflet.in Workers and activists claim that the situation on ground remains grim while AAP’s welfare announcements are marked with delay and laxity in implementation. Amidst a citywide lockdown that is now in its fifth week with a positivity rate that has come down to its lowest – less than 5% – in the last 45 days in Delhi, desperation is growing now in several of the national capital’s industrial areas and pushing...

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 Innovation in vaccine production can have an impact only if it is accessible to all. Patents and access to life-saving drugs has always been an emotive and contentious issue. The right to healthy life is a moral minimum, and to find a rational basis to deny it is deeply offensive to the idea of life itself. At the same time, pharma corporations and institutions claim patents are a just...