'...Having the Aarogya Setu tracking app on your phone is now a condition for millions of workers in India to enter office premises, work from home, register attendance, and in some cases, be paid salaries. Some managers are even insisting that employees’ family members get the app... It was launched as a voluntary app, but the number of people who aren’t required to use it today is fast shrinking. India is now the only democracy to make its tracking app mandatory for people outside containment zones...'
'“It was around 7 PM in the evening on 8 May. I was in my house, cutting fruits for iftar. My husband was sitting on the bed at the other corner of the room, playing with my one-year-old daughter when some policemen barged into the house, dragged him outside and thrashed him mercilessly.”... Rehana* said she pleaded with the police to let her husband at least break his Ramzaan fast with a drop of water. “But they did not relent,” she said, breaking down beside the plate of chopped fruits...'
'In less than a week after National Herald had exposed that the Delhi government has been fudging the death data, the Aam Aadmi Party-led government has stopped including the hospital-wise death data from the daily health bulletin. This will inevitably lead to more cover-ups in the death data from the National Capital and also enable the government to avoid questions about number of deaths in specific hospitals. Additionally, the government has also been under-reporting the number of Covid-19 patients on ventilators in hospitals...'
'Adding to the woes of Dr Kafeel Khan – who has been lodged in Mathura jail since January – the National Security Act (NSA) charges that were slapped against him were extended by a period of three months on Tuesday, 12 May. NSA charges were slapped against Khan in February for three months, which were scheduled to get over on Tuesday evening, his brother Adil Khan told The Quint. The Mathura jail has a capacity of 500 prisoners but has 1,750 prisoners lodged in it, even as the country observes a coronavirus induced-lockdown...'
'A rapid survey done by four independent organisations on the condition of migrant workers in Gujarat and Maharashtra has suggested several measures that could be taken to ease the situation. The rapid survey, done by theCentre for Labour Research (CLRA), Habitat Forum (Inhaf), Mashal and sociology department of Savitribai Phule University, Pune was done between April 23 and May 1,on issues related to stranded labours, migrants and workers in the unorganised sector... Employment and wages were uncertain in both states.
'At least six journalists have been booked by Himachal Pradesh police for comments and ground reports on problems being faced by migrant labourers, businesses and citizens during the COVID-19 lockdown. According to a report on Newslaundry, the reasons behind these cases filed against the journalists ranged from their reporting on hunger among migrant workers, lack of proper food distribution, to their social media activity which involved sharing reports of other newspapers, to criticising the district administration for laxity in areas such as quarantining inter-state travellers...'
'More than 10,000 Muslim migrant workers from Bihar and West Bengal residing at Painters’ Colony in Jaipur’s Nahri ka Naka area, who have only been given dry ration packets since the nationwide lockdown was imposed on March 25, took to the streets on Sunday asking to be sent back home. They claimed that only around 400 packets, each containing a total of seven kilograms of flour, pulses, rice and salt, was distributed among 10,000 people last month. This, too, only came after volunteers of the CPI(ML), CPM and CPI in the area intervened.
'The Indian media have not been active in checking Islamophobia during the coronavirus pandemic. They are equally culpable of being passive when it comes to questioning the government. A global pandemic, it is being argued, may not be the best time to subject the government to scrutiny. On the contrary, it is all the more important for the media to keep a strict vigil on the government’s actions at a time like this. Instead, large sections of the media have become the drum-beaters of the government’s self-congratulatory pronouncements on Covid-19.
'The editor of a Gujarati news portal was charged with sedition and questioned by the police after he published a report that suggested the chief minister could be changed by the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party due to rising number of coronavirus cases in the state...'
'To Narendra Modi, Covid-19 is not so much a disease as a deus ex machina. Before he announced the largest lockdown in human history on 24 March, the Indian prime minister was submerged in a pool of self-engineered crises. Citizenly protests against his legislative disfigurement of Indian secularism had erupted in every major city, more than four dozen lives were devoured at his doorstep in February in the worst religious bloodletting in Delhi since the 1984, unemployment was soaring, and the economy was poised to post the slowest pace of growth in a decade.
