-The Hindu Public works could provide valuable support to the urban poor, especially if women get most of the jobs The COVID-19 crisis has drawn attention to the insecurities that haunt the lives of the urban poor. Generally, they are less insecure than the rural poor, partly because fallback work is easier to find in urban areas — if only pulling a rickshaw or selling snacks. Still, the urban poor are exposed...
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Migrants who made 1,400 km lockdown journey from Gurgaon to Bihar say their vote is for Modi -Shanker Arnimesh
-ThePrint.in Migrants from Hussaina village in Bihar’s Begusarai district admit they have faced hardships getting back home during the lockdown but will still vote for the PM. Begusarai: At the peak of the national lockdown in May, Kaushal Kumar and Ranjit Kumar were among 14 people, which included their families, who made the arduous trek from Gurgaon in Haryana to their native village of Hussaina in Bihar’s Begusarai district. The 14 braved the...
More »Can MGNREGA Be Reshaped and Reoriented to Help India's Farmers? -Siraj Hussain and Jugal Mohapatra
-TheWire.in As a fresh spotlight hits India's rural employment programme, two suggestions have been offered to “repurpose” MGNREGA to utilise the additional labour force that have returned to their villages. Due to the sudden lockdown and resultant job losses, over one crore people have returned to their homes, some walking hundreds of kilometres, others using all conceivable means of transport – buses, trucks, trailers, concrete mixers, Shramik trains, motorcycles, scooters, bicycles, auto...
More »India cannot fight a pandemic with police lathis. It must ensure people have food – and dignity -Supriya Sharma
-Scroll.in Scenes in the national capital offer a glimpse into the crisis. “You can speak to him in English,” said a rickshaw puller who was eating his first morsel of food for the day around 1 pm on Saturday. He was among more than a hundred people who had lined up in the heat outside a government school in South Delhi’s Jangpura neighbourhood to get a scoop of dal over a small...
More »Covid-19: Exodus from Mumbai, Pune as migrant workers pack trains headed East -Iram Siddique & Ajay Jadhav
-The Indian Express The slowdown has hit these workers the hardest. Faced with the prospect of not being able to earn any money until the end of the month, most decided it was better to return to their homes. Mumbai, Pune: As shops and establishments prepared to shut down following a Maharashtra government order that all private businesses and companies must remain closed from Saturday until March 31, an exodus began in...
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