-The Hindu The pandemic has highlighted the importance of expanding social security nets Pinki is a 28-year-old Dalit woman from Saharanpur, U.P. Her husband met with an accident during the national lockdown in April 2020. The two of them had to sell all their belongings for his treatment and subsequently became dependent on her parents. Such avoidable miseries were heaped on millions due to the unilateral national lockdown in 2020. The monthly...

-The Tribune Cabinet also approves purchase of Covaxin for 18-44 category industrial workers The Punjab government on Thursday decided to join the COVAX facility alliance for global sourcing and procurement of Covid vaccines at the best price, becoming the first state to take such a step amid vaccine shortage in the country. The decision was taken during the Cabinet meeting, which also approved the purchase of Covaxin for industrial workers, for whose vaccination...

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,...

-CaravanMagazine.in On 20 April, Rajesh Pandit, a 40-year-old owner of a meat shop, returned from Ludhiana to Patna by train. He was running a steep fever. He spent that night at the Patna station, for lack of transport, but was not screened for COVID-19 by the state’s authorities. The next day, he took a bus from Patna’s Mithapur bus stand and reached Baruna Rasalpur village, in Samastipur district. He was not...

-Hindustan Times Studies on migrants, domestic workers, and jobs put off till situation improves. The delay may have an adverse impact on the proposed national employment policy. The Union government has suspended work on four key surveys on migrants, domestic workers, and jobs created by the transport sector and professionals because of the deadly second wave of the pandemic, possibly delaying a national employment policy based on these surveys. With lockdowns and curfews...