-Article-14.com Despite appeals not to deploy them for election duty in the midst of a  pandemic, teachers were made to work, as the government went back on promises of safety. We spoke to families of nine dead teachers, dealing with the loss of wage-earners, grief, anger and fear Lucknow (Uttar Pradesh): “I lost my wife and my baby, who would have come into this world soon.” The voice of Deepak Agrahari, 30, was...

-Hindustan Times The second wave will deepen inequality. Expand support to states, universalise PDS, and ramp up MGNREGS now Abandoned by the State that insisted on locking down, refusing to recognise the damage done to their livelihoods, India’s workers asserted their rights and made themselves heard by walking home in March 2020. The long march home was emblematic of the suffering and hardship unleashed by the first wave. A year later, it is...

-Newsclick.in The Stranded Workers Action Network (SWAN) said that its volunteers called 80 officers from across the 20 zones and enquired about the assistance being provided to migrant workers. The Union Labour Ministry’s helpline numbers for migrant workers are more of a “Post office”, a group of researchers from the Stranded Workers Action Network (SWAN) said on Monday, May 24, thus concluding that lessons from last year have not been learnt by...

-ThePrint.in In various state govts, the office of district magistrate has been reduced to a glorified Post office that receives instructions from various govt departments. Not so long ago, Prime Minister Narendra Modi had ridiculed India’s civil servants in Parliament when he questioned whether the government should be run by ‘babus’, a euphemism for bureaucrats. It is ironic to see the PM now, addressing the very same ‘babus’, the district magistrates of...

-Article-14.com A surge of untested, undocumented, unmonitored Covid-19 infections in India’s villages is killing thousands, many times more than reported cases. With no access to big-city medical care or Twitter SOSs, millions are at risk. Mumbai: It was past 10 pm when S H Mehdi, BAMS, saw off the last of the day’s 250-odd patients and settled down to speak over the phone. “Chaaron taraf fever phaili hui hai. (There are febrile...