-The Indian Express The Act was enacted to prevent the exploitation of inter-state migrant workmen by contractors, and to ensure fair and decent conditions of employment. The fallout of the lockdown in order to reduce the spread of COVID-19 highlights the urgent need to rationalise the legislative framework for labour in India. Migrant labour has been among the worst affected due to the lockdown. Their efforts to leave the Cities before the...
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Locked down in distress -Sakina Dhorajiwala and Rajendran Narayanan
-The Indian Express Centre’s policy of monopolising decisions, socialising economic losses in the wake of Covid-19 has left migrant workers in the lurch The 40-day lockdown was further extended at a time of sporadic expressions of resistance and anger by migrant workers in a few Cities. Extreme precarity doesn’t have a singular expression. While some are responding with anger, others are responding with resignation. The severe distress among migrant workers in India...
More »The indispensability of labour in reviving India’s economic engine -Maitreesh Ghatak
-Hindustan Times To enable their return to Cities, improve wages, living conditions, safety net. Coercion won’t work Migrant workers are like nowhere people. Yet, they are everywhere. From high-rises to highways, who builds them? It is a silent army of migrant workers, working day and night with no job security, no social safety net, and poor living conditions — yet, theirs are not the names we see on the billboards or the...
More »Not at the cost of food security -Siraj Hussain & Ajit Ranade
-The Indian Express Diverting rice to produce ethanol during the pandemic is unethical. Surplus grains should be used to feed those in distress. In the middle of the COVID-19 pandemic and a country-wide lockdown came an announcement that was difficult to believe. The press release said the National Biofuel Coordination Committee (NBCC) chaired by the Union Minister of Petroleum and Natural Gas has decided to use “surplus” rice available with the Food...
More »Boost wages to stimulate India’s growth -Jayan Jose Thomas
-The Hindu The economic crisis can be overcome only by raising the consumption of and investment for the poor Impoverishment among English workers during the early years of the Industrial Revolution had prompted Leicester framework knitters to frame this resolution in 1817: “… if liberal Wages were given to the Mechanics in general throughout the Country, the Home Consumption of our Manufactures would be immediately more than doubled, and consequently every hand...
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