-The Indian Express The states must engage NGOs, factories and charities including religious organisations to raise funds for meeting the expenditure on milk, eggs, cooking oil and vegetables, and even soaps and sanitisers. Nearly one-fifth of India’s labour force consists of internal migrants. As per the 2011 census, a quarter of the urban population consists of migrants. These tend to be predominantly male, from the less developed northern states, in the lower...

-TheWire.in "There was no ventilation. It was pitch dark inside and police gave us 10 mins to get into the container truck." Mumbai: On March 31, solicitor general Tushar Mehta claimed before the Supreme Court that there was “no person walking on the roads in an attempt to reach his/her home towns/villages”. He further claimed, under oath, that all Migrant Labourers had been shifted to shelter homes and are being provided with basic...

-TheWire.in While there may be no fears of a shortage, the national lockdown and its implementation have dealt a raw deal to most stakeholders within the system. New Delhi: Ghazipur’s vegetable and flower mandi wears a forlorn look these days. Just a few kilometres from the Anand Vihar Bus Terminal, which was thronged by thousands of migrant workers last weekend, the flower mandi’s business is muted, mirroring to a certain extent the stark...

-The Indian Express Invisible, largely, in the Census and in national sample surveys — and consequently to administrators — field studies have consistently claimed short-term labour mobility in India was significant. Of the many, many countries that COVID has now locked down, India stands, or rather, walks, alone. Bereft of transport, by road or rail, people are walking home, to nearby districts, and to far-off destinations several hundred kilometres away, the mother...

-The Hindu While some can practise social distancing, most Indians simply cannot as they have no social security What could possibly have been the reason for Prime Minister Narendra Modi to give only a four-hour notice for the lockdown? If the requirement was to keep the population indoors, strictly enforcing social distancing, how abjectly this has failed! Lakhs of Migrant Labourers have been jostling to get any form of transport back home;...