'As per Census 2011, India’s urban poor population living in informal settlements is over 65 million which is roughly 17 per cent of the total urban population. While the broad urban population growth is at two to three per cent per annum, growth in the number of people living in slums and informal urban settlements is much larger. It is also known that a significant number of them are excluded from different welfare schemes and basic services. Their situation is even more vulnerable during the COVID-19 pandemic.
'Amidst the dark shadow of India’s lockdown, the Delhi police – controlled by the Central government – has been busy with tasks entirely unrelated to controlling the Covid-19 pandemic. Its schedule is packed with searching homes and offices; confiscating phones and documents; and questioning, detaining, and arresting large numbers of persons. It is instructive that these arrests are being made when the Supreme Court has directed governments to decongest jails to prevent the spread of the coronavirus.
'Six migrant workers were killed and 95 others injured in separate road accidents in Uttar Pradesh when they were returning home during the ongoing lockdown to combat the coronavirus outbreak, police said on Friday...'
'The Narendra Modi government announces a grand stimulus ‘package’ that it claims is worth Rs 20 lakh crore or ‘10 per cent’ of India’s GDP. But barely a fraction of it is new money being pumped into the economy. What is made to look like a stimulus is mostly a grand loan mela. The Modi government is making hungry migrant labourers pay train fare. When this became a political hot potato, it said it was paying 85 per cent per cent of the fare and the state governments were paying the rest 15 per cent.
'Gujarat governor Acharya Devvrat has approved an Ordinance exempting new businesses being set up in the state from almost all the labour laws for a period of over three years. A top state government official said that the Governor’s nod to the draft Ordinance came earlier this week and it has now been sent for President Ram Nath Kovind’s assent on Wednesday...'
'“Hum paison ka chakkar mein nahin hai. Ghar jane ka chakkar mein hai,” said Mangal Yadav from Bihar. (We are not after money. We want to go back home). The sentiment was echoed by the hundreds of other labourers gathered under the pandal inside the IIT Hyderabad labour camp in Kandi village in Telangana’s Sangareddy district, when TNM met them in early May. Work was resumed by L&T management at phase 2 of the IIT Hyderabad campus from May 4, yet from about 600 labourers left in the camp, only a handful re-joined. The rest, like Mangal, had defied.
'The number of Covid-19 deaths in Delhi has been under the scanner for discrepancies between the government figures and those the hospitals have reported, leading to an upwards revision to 115 until Thursday, 14 May. But now, data accessed by ThePrint raises new questions about even this revised number of deaths in the city. The consolidated figures for Covid-related deaths provided by the designated cremation and burial grounds in the national capital is 443, which includes confirmed as well as suspected cases...'
'Last week, The New Indian Express, one of India’s major English newspapers, pulled down an article that was heavily critical of the Centre’s response to the COVID-19 outbreak. The article, entitled ‘Centre’s COVID-19 Communication Plan: hold back data, gag agencies and scientists’, discussed the government’s reluctance to share outbreak-related data and attempts to muzzle scientists.
'Stopped for violating lockdown orders, a BJP worker allegedly tried to crush a police inspector under SUV in Halvad town of Morbi district on Tuesday night...'
'Six migrant workers were killed and five were seriously injured on Wednesday night when a speeding State transport bus ran over them on the Delhi-Sharanpur highway near Muzaffarnagar, police said. The workers were walking from Punjab to their homes in different districts of Bihar...'
