With the rise in Covid-19 daily new cases and daily new deaths since March this year, media reports (please click here and here) on migrant workers returning back to their native places (i.e. places of origin) from migration destinations (i.e. workplaces likes cities and large industrial towns to where the informal and low skilled workers from the marginalised sections of the society migrate seasonally, and sometimes for a longer duration,...

-The Hindu Group of migrants in Greater Noida say they were forced into bondage during pandemic Noida: “No one listens to the poor man,” said 16-year-old Ramkishor outside the Gautam Budhha Nagar District Magistrate’s office on Tuesday. While he said he has that figured out, he was there waiting for someone to help him and his family out of the bonded labour situation. Ramkishor, his parents and two younger siblings, who are from...

-Newsclick.in The deeper rot in agriculture can be overcome through more far-reaching reforms, starting from an overhaul of pre-capitalist land relations and relations of production that continue to shackle productivity and are at the root of aggravating poverty, unemployment and inequality in rural India. It has been more than five months since farmers from different parts of the country began protesting in Delhi. They have been unflinching when it comes to their...

-Hindustan Times There has been limited assessment of the pandemic’s wider effects on the children of migrants. On Tuesday, the Supreme Court, in response to a petition filed by NGO Child Rights Trust, asked for data from all states and Union Territories on children of migrant workers. Nitin Kumar’s eyes were full of despair as he waited along with his parents for a bus to Hardoi at Anand Vihar bus station on...

-Scroll.in Data in Lucknow showed that mean monthly income for labour work fell 62%, from Rs 9,500 per month in pre-pandemic times to Rs 3,500 per month now. Asked how the lockdown-induced economic crisis affected the lives-livelihoods of daily wage workers, Rajesh Singh, in his early 20s in Lucknow said, “Since the time of Covid and the lockdown, there has been a severe crisis of employment opportunities in local labor markets. Getting...