-Working Peoples’ Charter Secretariat, dated 21st March, 2020   An open letter has been issued by civil society and trade union activists to the Finance Minister Ms. Nirmala Sitharaman, who is also heading the COVID-19 Economic Response Task Force. In that letter, a charter of demands has been put before the government to provide immediate relief to the working classes and the informal sector workers in the wake of COVID-19 outbreak in...

-Scroll.in With authorities shutting down key institutions in several cities, sputtering economy hurts the most vulnerable. On Friday afternoon, Bandra Terminus in suburban Mumbai seemed to be its usual bustling self. Scores of people lined up to buy themselves tickets to places in western and northern India. Nothing seemed out of the ordinary, except for the fact that many of the passengers had coverings around their faces: some wore construction masks, some...

-Hindustan Times Coronavirus in India: Adityanath had formed a high-level committee under the state finance minister Suresh Khanna, comprising agriculture and labour ministers, to decide the nature of the assistance to the labourers. Uttar Pradesh chief minister Yogi Adityanath said on Saturday lakhs of daily wage labourers and construction workers will be given Rs 1000 as the state remained under lockdown to contain the spread of coronavirus outbreak. The state government had announced...

-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...

-The Hindu Business Line INBI has said that emergency basic income should be completely unconditional Close on the heels of the United States (US) and the United Kingdom (UK) announcing measures to protect incomes of vulnerable households through cash transfers and other fiscal measures, the Indian Network for Basic Income (INBI), an advocacy group working in the area of basic income transfers, has asked the Central Government to consider an emergency basic...