'From Aadhaar details to get on Shramik trains, to filthy quarantine centres and police beatings; the journey home is stripping workers of rights and dignity... After being stranded since March—walking back home on foot, peddling their bicycles, hiding in trucks—migrant workers have finally been given a dignified option to travel back home. On 1 May, International Labour Day, the Indian Railways started running “Shramik Special” trains to move them to their home states.
'Hours after Karnataka Chief Minister B S Yediyurappa met leading property developers of the state, the government has decided to cancel all trains that were to ferry migrant workers to their home town from Wednesday, 6 May. The state government has written to Indian Railways cancelling all trains scheduled from Wednesday. This decision comes even as several migrant workers are struggling to find a train to return home. The Quint has accessed a letter written by N Manjunath Prasad, nodal officer for inter-state travel from the state, claiming that no more trains are required.
'The State Human Rights Commission (SHRC) has sought a report from the chief secretary of Tamil Nadu on a petition from People’s Watch, an NGO, which stated that 1,600 guest workers are starving without food in a Sipcot industrial estate in Kancheepuram district. According to the petition by the Madurai-based NGO, one of their members personally verified information that 1,600 workers engaged in different manufacturing units in the industrial estate have been suffering for about a month now without work...'
'There could not be a clearer indication of how bad the coronavirus crisis is going to get for Mumbai. On Monday, the 40th day of lockdown, the BMC was working feverishly to add new isolation beds, especially in the worst effected south-central Mumbai. Soon, one of Mumbai’s prettiest open spaces, the Mahalaxmi Racecourse will have a 200-bed isolation facility in its vast parking lot.
'One night in lockdown this April, George Kuruvilla was having dinner and watching the news when he fielded a phone call from a prospective supplier who talked up a tracking-wristband and accompanying software to ensure possible COVID-19 patients don’t violate their quarantine. What followed offers an illuminating insight into how India’s tech companies are turning India into a surveillance state one sales pitch at a time.
'Even as reopening of some factories, shops and companies becomes possible with partial lifting of the lockdown, contractual workers and labourers in Delhi, who spent over a month without job, pay and in many cases food, say they would rather head home than rejoin work. Complaining about how the lockdown period had turned them into “beggars”, many labourers The Indian Express spoke to said they are waiting for trains to start leaving from Delhi.
'The number of official Covid deaths in Malegaon in Maharashtra is just 12 since the first case in early April but, overall, the number of deaths in this city has shown an unusual surge. At 580 deaths for April, as per civic records obtained by The Indian Express, it’s almost twice the figure for the same month last year (277) and a 48 per cent jump over the number of deaths in March this year (see chart).
'“For the past two months, we have not received our salary. We have not been provided with proper food or ration. We were left to starve and now, they are asking us to resume work,” says a labourer from Jharkhand, who has been working at a site in Ambattur, Chennai. He continues, “They say they are ready to pay us now, but we are not ready to trust them. We have our children and parents to take care of.
'Family members of arrested Jamia Millia Islamia student Safoora Zargar say they are “appalled and upset” by the attempts made to slander her on social media, but her husband says he is keeping faith in the country’s judicial system. Zargar, a 27-year-old M.Phil. student from Jamia, is over three months pregnant, and was arrested by the Delhi Police’s special cell on 10 April. She was later denied bail and, on 21 April, charged under the stringent Unlawful Activities Prevention Act (UAPA).
'It’s the season for politics over train tickets, even as migrant workers across the country are confused, and struggling to reach home. The BJP on Monday claimed that the Indian Railways has subsidised 85% of ticket fare for special trains being run to transport migrant workers. It’s only the remaining 15% that the state governments have to pay, they said. This development comes after Sonia Gandhi, interim-Congress president, earlier in the day said that state units of the Congress party will take care of the train fares which migrants are being forced to pay in many parts of the country.
