The Coronavirus Lockdown Has Been a War on India’s Informal Labour
Harsh Mander and Amitanshu Verma | The Wire | 22 August 2020
The harshest lockdown in the world with one of the smallest relief packages has left in its trail catastrophic suffering imposed by the state on informal labour. The debilitating impact of this, many fear, will last for at least a generation, with many more children being pulled out of school into labour and trafficking; even greater levels of endemic hunger and malnourishment; millions slipping into poverty; and this poverty being more intense and much harder to escape. Economist and professor of development studies Barbara Harris-White regards the lockdown a ‘declaration of war’ on informal labour through ‘policy inaction’ towards their survival. In two newspaper articles written with economists Prabhat Patnaik and Jayati Ghosh on measures we believed that governments must take to mitigate the suffering created by the decision to snap the lifeline of all livelihoods of workers, we advocated cash transfers of Rs 7,000 a month to every household for at least three months, and universal access to the public distribution system. Read More