-The Hindu The state and the rich and middle classes remain indifferent as millions slip into chronic hunger and intense poverty India’s labouring poor have largely disappeared even from the inner pages of newspapers and from television screens. It is as though, after the country has gradually unlocked and most migrants have returned home, the wrenching distress of mass hunger and sudden unemployment that racked their lives has somehow passed. The reality...

-TheWire.in The signatories have said that Delhi police have botched up the probe to “conceal the role played by BJP leaders in the communal violence”. New Delhi: Nearly 270 prominent citizens of Delhi have urged Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal to institute an independent probe under a retired judge into the communal violence in northeast Delhi in February this year. Citing six reasons for demanding such a probe, a letter by the citizens...

A recent survey that was conducted through telephonic interviews among 1,405 respondents across the states of Delhi-NCR, Uttar Pradesh, Bihar, Haryana, Himachal Pradesh, Assam, Rajasthan and Jharkhand reveals the precarious conditions of workers nearly 45 days after the announcement of COVID-19 lockdown. The report entitled Labouring Lives: Hunger, Precarity and Despair amid Lockdown tries to understand the extent (and depth) of job loss and hunger 45 days after the lockdown. Hunger and...

-The Hindu There is a collective culpability in the social crime during the lockdown — of the dispossession of India’s working poor The traumatic months of the national lockdown lay bare many troubling truths about the profound estrangement of people of privilege from the working poor. They reveal a society in which the privileged are extraordinarily comfortable with inequality, and wanting in elementary empathy and solidarity. They confirm that the veneer of...

-The Hindu There are clear, implementable steps the Centre can take in fiscal terms to revive the economy and support livelihoods The Prime Minister has just announced Lockdown 4.0. Despite some resulting increase in economic activity, vast numbers of working people will remain without their regular incomes. He also announced a package of ₹20 lakh crore, but this includes already allocated money of ₹6-lakh crore and monetary policy directives to banks and...