-The Hindu U.P. was the only State to do a skill mapping exercise of returning migrants last year, says an official Just four lakh migrant workers returned to Uttar Pradesh during the second COVID-19 wave this year, compared to 40 lakh workers after the national lockdown of 2020, indicating many of these workers may not have returned to their earlier workplaces after the first wave and got gainfully employed in U.P., top...

-Newsclick.in Nearly 93% of the Indian garment workers were pushed below the international poverty line of the World Bank in April and May, 2020 Garment workers lost a significant amount of wage during the pandemic in six Asian countries including India. Workers’ wages were at poverty levels even before the pandemic, and were pushed further below the International Poverty Line in their countries by the pandemic, according to a recent report titled...

-The Hindu The guidelines laid down by the Supreme Court are welcome, but they require robust systems. The Supreme Court on June 29 pronounced its judgment in the migrant labourers case. The case was initiated last year after the national lockdown was announced on March 24. Thousands of landless labourers had started walking towards their home States due to the loss of employment and income. The Supreme Court took cognisance of the...

-Livemint.com The aim is to enrol nearly 380 mn workers and provide them benefits during times of distress The Union government will roll out the unorganized sector database by the end of July to enrol almost 380 million workers, weeks after the Supreme Court rapped the labour ministry, saying that it showed “unpardonable" apathy towards workers in the informal sector. The development comes more than a year after the mass reverse migration of...

The recent Supreme Court of India’s judgments (please click here and here) related to ensuring food security of the migrant and unorganised sector workers through the provision of dry ration, running of community kitchens and proper implementation of the 'One Nation One Ration Card' scheme should come as no surprise to us. A recent review of some of the robust studies, which relied on multi-state surveys (or reference surveys), having...