-The Indian Express Invisible, largely, in the Census and in national sample surveys — and consequently to administrators — field studies have consistently claimed short-term labour mobility in India was significant. Of the many, many countries that COVID has now locked down, India stands, or rather, walks, alone. Bereft of transport, by road or rail, people are walking home, to nearby districts, and to far-off destinations several hundred kilometres away, the mother...

-Livemint.com * There will be a tsunami of job losses for employees who don’t have a regular salary, people without a written contract * A labour market crunch right now can easily turn into a nightmare. Besides the possibility of social unrest, expect more demands for more reservations in government On a Monday afternoon, a day before India announced a 21-day lockdown to flatten the curve of covid-19 infections, Sunil Gupta, chairman and...

-NDTV Spraying chemicals on migrant workers to sanitize them as in Uttar Pradesh. Locking them up in a shed as in Bihar. Opening temporary jails for them as in Haryana. Herding them into ill-equipped quarantine centers across national highways. A Home Ministry circular invoking the penal provisions of the National Disaster Management Act to imprison such defaulters. India has shamed itself in its utterly inhuman treatment of migrant workers - jobless,...

-The Indian Express That migrants' health takes a huge beating in this process. That the already-malnourished will suffer immensely, says Chinmay Tumbe. Economist Chinmay Tumbe, author most recently of India Moving – A History of Migration and an Assistant Professor at IIM (Ahmedabad) spoke to Seema Chishti on the many implications of the surging crowds of migrants anxious to go home in the wake of the national lockdown. * Given the sudden rush...

-The New Indian Express In a chat with The New Indian Express Editor GS Vasu, the internationally renowned medical expert shares two key findings that give India reason to hope. HYDERABAD: At a time of paranoia and panic over how long this corona-fuelled lockdown may stretch, internationally-renowned medical expert Dr D Nageshwar Reddy has good news. "This is something we can easily conquer. There’s no need to panic,” he says, while adding...