-Financial Express As part of the strategy to spur the rural economy, migrants should be encouraged to invest in the medium-term and long-term livelihood options. Roti, Kapda and Makan symbolise the essential requirements for a decent living with the absolute basic being food (roti). The question of lives and livelihood is inextricably linked to food. Perhaps, the most disruptive impact of the Covid-19 pandemic has been the forced return of migrants to...

Although social activists and concerned economists demanded at least Rs. 1 lakh crore to be earmarked in favour of the Mahatma Gandhi Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme (MGNREGS), the Finance Minister in her budget speech on 1st February allocated only Rs.61,500 crore to it for the financial year 2020-21. As compared to the fund spent on MGNREGA in 2019-20 (i.e. revised estimate of Rs.71,001.81 crore), the amount set aside for the...

-Down to Earth Several Saurashtra migrants who had returned to work in Surat in May-end said they have fallen back on land resources for agriculture The Saurashtra region in western Gujarat has been witnessing a second wave of reverse migration amid the novel coronavirus disease (COVID-19) pandemic. Labourers employed in the diamond industry in Surat had first migrated back to their villages in Saurashtra when the Union government had first announced nationwide lockdown...

-The Hindu The longer-term decline in the labour participation rate can be attributed to a host of factors The COVID-19 pandemic has disrupted economies across the world and presented policymakers with the unenviable task of sustaining employment amidst lockdowns. However, the academic and political debates in India on unemployment, which is widely attributed to jobless growth amidst stagnation in the agricultural and manufacturing sectors, predate the pandemic. It will be useful to...

-The Hindu There is a resonance between Saramago’s literary world and the migrant labour distress in contemporary India The novel, Blindness, by Portuguese Nobel Laureate José Saramago, is strikingly prescient about a sweeping illness. The plot revolves around a mysterious epidemic because of which people suddenly turn blind. The thread It starts with a person driving his car who turns blind while waiting at a traffic signal. He pleads to be taken home and...