-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 Such a programme is the need of the hour not only as a measure to revive the urban economy now, but also to mitigate any further shocks to it in the future The collective memory of how India lived through the world’s largest lockdown will be seared by images of how our state and society dealt with the country’s workers. Left largely to fend for themselves, millions living in...

-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...

A recent survey that was conducted through telephonic interviews among 1,405 respondents across the states of Delhi-NCR, Uttar Pradesh, Bihar, Haryana, Himachal Pradesh, Assam, Rajasthan and Jharkhand reveals the precarious conditions of workers nearly 45 days after the announcement of COVID-19 lockdown. The report entitled Labouring Lives: Hunger, Precarity and Despair amid Lockdown tries to understand the extent (and depth) of job loss and hunger 45 days after the lockdown. Hunger and...

-The Indian Express The current crisis should force a discussion on the levels of social protection which should be available to gig workers including wage protection, health benefits and safety assurance. COVID-19 has induced a domino effect in the global job market. A few days ago, a strange message landed in my LinkedIn inbox: Desperation was written all over the poignant plea for a job opening. Jobless since March, with an aged...