-Newsclick.in Unions of workers under digital platforms are raising voices urging the government to ensure labour rights for gig workers. Hyderabad: Food delivery company Swiggy has reportedly laid-off over 350 employees citing the pandemic, after removing over 1,100 employees earlier in May. While the food delivery sector is one among the worst-hit sectors due to the raging pandemic that resulted in Massive indiscriminate layoffs, unions of workers under digital platforms are raising...

-Down to Earth The ordinance does not expressly define ‘extraordinary circumstances’: Such legislative ambiguity makes one question the entire exercise of introducing this particular provision As the Union government announced Massive reforms as part of the novel coronavirus disease (COVID-19) relief package, attention went to three agriculture sector ordinances related to farmers’ trade, contract farming and amendments in the Essential Commodities Act. While each of the three ordinances have far-reaching implications from legal...

-Newsclick.in The NBWL has recently granted clearance to North Eastern Coalfields, a subsidiary of Coal India Limited, for open cast mining over an area of 98.59 hectares in the Saleki area of the rainforests. New Delhi: The chorus for banning all mining activities within the rainforests of Assam has been rising after the National Board of Wild Life (NBWL) recently granted clearance to coal mining in the region, allegedly overlooking ecological concerns. Several...

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...

-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...