-The Hindu The second wave has amplified the issue of rent which does not draw much attention as food and income support do As State governments have begun implementing weekend curfews and lockdown-like conditions amid the second wave of COVID, there is another issue that is emerging — rent crises within informal rental housing markets. For example, domestic workers in Jaipur, Rajasthan, have begun reporting to the Rajasthan Mahila Kamgar Union (RMKU)...

-The Telegraph Published by the University of Bonn in Germany, the findings are significant at a time workers have again begun returning home amid a Covid resurgence in India The rural job guarantee scheme and the Garib Kalyan Rojgar Yojana provided work to less than eight per cent of the migrant workers who had returned home after last year’s lockdown, a study has found. It has argued that the highly skilled returned migrants...

-The Indian Express Delhi Police's special branch asked the district police to intensify patrolling at night to prevent unauthorized movement of labourers. As Covid cases surge and the possibility of a lockdown looms in the national capital, the Special Branch of Delhi Police, after taking cues from the mass migrant movement during the last shutdown, has asked all 15 district police officials to counsel migrant workers and send them back 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...

-The Indian Express The lack of a social safety net resulted in misery for workers, many of whom were suddenly left without means of transport. Women were at the receiving end of the restrictions with the report pointing out how 50 per cent of households surveyed reported that women were spending more time in cooking or fetching firewood than before. The outbreak of the Covid-19 pandemic and the restrictions that followed has...