-The Hindu A new publication contends that their lockdown misery was no anomaly but an effect of exclusion from full citizenship When Prime Minister Narendra Modi announced the world’s most stringent lockdown on March 24, 2020 with barely four hours notice, lakhs of migrant workers across the country found themselves trapped in a novel situation: their livelihood in the city was gone, but they could not return to their native villages. The...

-Business Standard The tentative data sourced from the GKRA website shows that since June, around 1.10 million works have been completed under the campaign. Much of the Rs 10,000-crore extra allocation for the Garib Kalyan Rojgar Abhiyan (GKRA), an employment scheme for migrants THRown adrift by the sudden lockdown in March, will be spent on works done THRough the flagship Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (MGNREGA) and rural housing project....

-The Telegraph ‘Farmers at mercy of corporates, food security THReatened’ Eminent economist, professor emeritus at Jawaharlal Nehru University and activist Prabhat Patnaik traces the downward and dangerous slide of the Indian economy, from the demonetisation to the new farm bills. * The first onslaught was in the form of the demonetisation. While Amartya Sen termed this step “despotic”, Narendra Modi gushed that there would be no black money after the demonetisation. In the...

-Newsclick.in The Unorganised Workers’ Social Security Act, 2008 (UWSSA) rightly conceives a “decentralised registration model” at the local levels with the help of the Workers’ Facilitation Centres (WFCs). Unimaginative and obscure rulemaking will make it difficult for workers to access benefits that the law entitles them to, argues Dr. K R Shyam Sundar. The government has endorsed the unjustified stinker of a tag of “Inspector-Raj”, crowned by the business class to labour and...

-The Indian Express All indications show that an economic revival will take some time — support is required during this period to at least prevent starvation. The effects of the lockdown and the resultant economic crisis continue to disproportionately impact the poor and informal sector workers. Since the lockdown, the Government of India (GoI) has announced relief packages under the Pradhan Mantri Gareeb Kalyan Yojana (PMGKY) and Atmanirbhar Bharat. However, numerous studies...