Heena Sharma Blog

Here is a selection of important Covid-19 -related articles in Indian news publications. From the informal Indian economy in the time of a pandemic, to making cities liveable for migrants after lockdown, and why Mumbai is still struggling to cope with coronavirus — read these and more in today’s India dispatch. Migrant labourers are the most disenfranchised invisible citizens: For a majority of migrant labourers, migration is either a livelihood accumulation strategy or survival risk-reducing strategy, whichever way we define the nature of migration. Migration studies also confirm that migrant labourers are the most exploited and disenfranchised invisible citizens. Read this interview with political scientist Ashwani Kumar, whose forthcoming co-edited book Migration and Mobility is to be out soon. Kumar speaks on migration, inter-state workers and amendment to the Inter-State Migrant Workers Act, 1979. Read More

Article 21-A in the Constitution of India provide free and compulsory education of all children in the age group of six to fourteen years as a Fundamental Right in such a manner as the State may, by law, determine. The Right of Children to Free and Compulsory Education (RTE) Act, 2009, means that every child has a right to full time elementary education of satisfactory and equitable quality in a formal school which satisfies certain essential norms and standards. In 2001, an estimated 1% of all child workers, or about 120,000 children in India were in a hazardous job. The Constitution of India in the Fundamental Rights and the Directive Principles of State Policy prohibits child labour below the age of 14 years in any factory or mine or castle or engaged in any other hazardous employment (Article 24). In Article 39(e), the State shall, in particular, direct its policy towards securing the health and strength of workers, men and women, and the tender age of children are not a...