-Civil Society News When the lockdown began to ease in June, migrant workers who had left Ahmedabad for their villages started returning to the city in the hope of finding some employment. It hasn’t been easy. Industrial areas haven’t opened up fully and employers are going slow on taking on workers. Sunk in debt with insecure work, hunger now stalks migrant workers. Entire families have been living out in the open on worksites....

-The Hindu The events of the pandemic show how it is the need of the hour to modernise India’s archaic tax laws The word ‘lockdown’, which is Collins Dictionary’s word of the year, sums up the pain that the world underwent in 2020. As a result of the pandemic-induced lockdown, India’s GDP contracted consecutively for two quarters from April to September 2020. Some have gained from the pandemic. India’s super rich only became...

-Mongabay.com * A latest government study has found that mining activities in the coal-rich Tamnar area of Chhattisgarh have put the local population, mainly tribal people, at an increased risk of acute respiratory diseases and tuberculosis. * The study reveals that in the case of tuberculosis, the disease burden rate in Tamnar is nearly double the national rate and almost triple the rate in the state, highlighting the adverse impact of mining. *...

-Livemint.com Politics in India has been based on caste in recent decades. But a rising middle class and increasing inequality within caste groups is paving the way for a class-based faultline. One cliché looms large in every election campaign in India: that caste politics may finally give way to class politics. But as counting begins on the day of the election verdict, caste subsumes every other factor, even in serious analyses of...

-Livemint.com The farmers on Thursday held a press conference at the Delhi-Haryana border and threatened to block railway tracks if their demands are not met. Members of Kisan Mazdoor Sangarsh Committee begin their journey to Delhi to join the ongoing farmers' protest against the new agriculture laws. The farmers' protest enters the 16th day on Friday. "Around 700 tractor trolleys are moving towards Delhi's Kundli border," says SS Pandher, Kisan Mazdoor Sangarsh Committee. Meanwhile,...