Subir Sinha: COVID has blurred the lines between waged, coerced and trafficked labour in India

By Dilip -

Numerous news outlets and activist groups in India have reported an increase in trafficking, bonded labour, and slave-like working conditions in the past weeks. The two main stories were the rescue of young boys from a basement bangle factory in Rajasthan and Gujarat and the rescue of young girls from sex work and domestic servitude. Instead of seeing increases in trafficked and coerced labour as a consequence of the coronavirus pandemic and the lockdown imposed in March, I suggest that it is located in a longer story of labour’s weakening position vis-a-vis their employers and the erosion of their existing rights. The pandemic and the lockdown did not create the conditions for the subjection of labour or for trafficking. They deepened existing asymmetries.

The popular view of the ‘India success story’ is that of sustained high growth rates on the one hand and record reductions in absolute poverty on the other. But in fact high growth was delivered on the backs on hyper-exploitation of ‘informal’ and ‘migrant’ labour, which has been “ground down by growth”. India has also relied heavily on the large-scale transfer of land ownership and the hyper-exploitation of nature. Successive governments have pursued the strategy of making ‘cheap land’ and ‘cheap nature’, along with ‘cheap labour’, available to capitalists, which has produced a steady stream of workers away from affected rural areas to the cities….

https://www.opendemocracy.net/en/beyond-trafficking-and-slavery/covid-has-blurred-lines-between-waged-coerced-and-trafficked-labour-india/

George Lakey on Capitalism, public health and the Nordic model

'Homage to Humanity'

Pravaasi - A Poem by Taapsee Pannu

Bharat Bhushan - Targeting labour laws: On whose behalf do states operate?

Pratap Bhanu Mehta: Migrant labour and the unemployed will be demanding their rights, not our mercy

India coronavirus: The underpaid and unprotected women leading the Covid-19 war

Sanjay Srivastava - India’s anti-COVID strategy is premised on a mistaken idea and a pretence

India's poorest 'fear hunger may kill us before coronavirus'

Mike Davis on COVID-19: The monster is finally at the door / Impact on the global poor / Capitalism vs human survival

Tom Engelhardt : A vote for the apocalypse // Robert Roy Britt: Anti-Science Attitudes are Killing Americans

Patrick Cockburn: Trump, Erdogan, Modi, Orban, Bolsonaro – populist nationalists have met their match in the coronavirus

After the Truth Shower - Webinar on the Pandemic. April 26 2020

The pandemic will kill more Americans than died in Vietnam // Trump suggests injections of disinfectant to cure coronavirus

I Am a Mad Scientist. By Kate Marvel

JOSH DZIEZA - Save the Honeybee, Sterilize the Earth

We'll find a treatment for coronavirus – but drug companies will decide who gets it

10 Theses on the Proliferation of Egocrats (1977)

'We did it to ourselves': scientist says intrusion into nature led to pandemic

The champions of capitalism are refusing to admit their ideology has failed

America has no real public health system – coronavirus has a clear run

The US is losing its superpower status and it might not recover / Trump’s Slow-Motion 9/11

Delilah Friedler: Capitalism Is America’s Religion. The Virus Makes That Clear
American capitalism has dropped the mask — and its face is cruel and selfish

Leon Fink - Socialized Love in the Face of Pandemic // Why the coronavirus could be the tipping point in reshaping the global economy

Just as there are no atheists on a sinking ship, there are no free-marketeers in a pandemic // “Chinese Virus,” World Market

Sonia Shah: Think Exotic Animals Are to Blame for the Coronavirus? Think Again // Naomi Klein: Coronavirus Is the Perfect Disaster for Disaster Capitalism

Noam Chomsky: Internationalism or Extinction (Universalizing Resistance)

Sanjay Srivastava - India’s anti-COVID strategy is premised on a mistaken idea and a pretence

India's poorest 'fear hunger may kill us before coronavirus'

Jairus Banaji on the Indian corporatist strategy of subordinating farm households and family labor

Navsharan Singh: A million reasons to march

Aruna Roy: All citizens should stand with the protesting farmers. At stake is India’s food self-sufficiency and sovereignty

Discussion on Indian Agriculture and the ongoing Kisan agitation

Amit Bhaduri: Faces in mirror held up by farmers’ protest

Can Capitalism and Democracy Coexist?

Defying capitalism and socialism, Kumarappa and Gandhi had imagined a decentralised Indian economy - Venu Madhav Govindu & Deepak Malghan

Amandeep Sandhu on Arthiyas - extract from PANJAB: Journeys Through Fault Lines

Ravinder Kaur: Has Modi finally met his match in India's farmers?

Indian Farmers' Protest - Work in progress videos

STATE OF RURAL AND AGRARIAN INDIA REPORT 2020. By the Network of Rural and Agrarian Studies

P. Sainath: Did You Think the New Laws Were Only About the Farmers? // SCBA president says farm laws 'unconstitutional', offers free services as lawyer to agitating farmers

 Shobhit Mahajan: Incredible Indians

Lucknow: families give consent but cops stop interfaith wedding // UP villagers allege the police forced the so-called 'love jehad' arrest

Listen to this kisan's views on the Modi Government

Why should Indian agriculture be liberalised when in most countries governments subsidise it? By Christophe Jaffrelot , Hemal Thakker


Popular posts from this blog

Third degree torture used on Maruti workers: Rights body

By Dilip -
The People’s Union for Democratic Rights on Tuesday alleged that third degree torture methods were used by the Gurgaon Criminal Investigation Agency while interrogating workers of Maruti Suzuki India Limited’s Manesar plant who are accused of involvement in the killing of an HR manager and the violent attack at the plant on July 18. The PUDR alleged that the Gurgaon CIA investigation “did not seem” to be directed at solving the crime or probing the involvement of the arrested workers in the incidents and crimes recorded in the FIR but instead was based on their involvement in trade union activities. Grave doubts  “The use of third degree torture in police custody, and the securing of arrestees’ signatures on blank papers by the police, gives rise to grave doubts regarding the ability of such an investigation in effectively identifying or arresting those guilty. The police and the State seem keener to reassure Maruti Suzuki Ltd. and ensure that production continues,” the PUDR stat
Read more

Haruki Murakami: On seeing the 100% perfect girl one beautiful April morning

By Dilip -
According to Murakami, “1Q84” is just an amplification of one of his most popular short stories,   which (in its English version) is five pages long. “Basically, it’s the same,” he told me. “A boy meets a girl. They have separated and are looking for each other. It’s a simple story. I just made it long.” One beautiful April morning, on a narrow side street in Tokyo's fashionable Harujuku neighborhood, I walked past the 100% perfect girl. Tell you the truth, she's not that good-looking. She doesn't stand out in any way. Her clothes are nothing special. The back of her hair is still bent out of shape from sleep. She isn't young, either - must be near thirty, not even close to a "girl," properly speaking. But still, I know from fifty yards away: She's the 100% perfect girl for me. The moment I see her, there's a rumbling in my chest, and my mouth is as dry as a desert..." read the story: http://www.youmightfindyourself.com/post/22131227
Read more

Albert Camus's lecture 'The Human Crisis', New York, March 1946. 'No cause justifies the murder of innocents'

By Dilip -
The morning after a great historical crisis, you feel as sad and sick as after a heavy night. But there is no aspirin for historical hangovers .. The world is no longer divided into the just or unjust, but into masters and slaves. He who is right is he who enslaves.  Albert Camus     La crise de l'homme : THE HUMAN CRISIS   (Text read by Viggo Mortensen on March 28 2016)   Ladies and Gentlemen: when I was invited to give a series of lectures in the United States of America, I felt some doubt and hesitation. I am really not old enough to give lectures, and I am more at ease with the process of thinking than I am making categorical statements... since I don't feel I have any claim on what is generally called the truth. I shared this reservation and was very politely told that my personal opinion didn't matter. What mattered was that I'd be able to offer some facts about France so that my listeners could form their own opinions. It was then suggested that I might
Read more

The Almond Trees by Albert Camus (1940)

By Dilip -
Image
'Do you know', Napoleon once said to Fontanes, 'what astounds me most about the world?  The impotence of force to establish anything.  There are only two powers in the world: the sword and the mind.  In the end, the sword is always conquered by the mind' Conquerors, you see, are sometimes melancholy.  They have to pay some price for so much vainglory. But what a hundred years ago was true of the sword is no longer true today of the tank. Conquerors have made progress, and the dismal silence of places without intelligence has been established for years at a time in a lacerated Europe. At the time of the hideous wars of Flanders, Dutch painters could still perhaps paint the cockerels in their farmyards. The Hundred Years War has likewise been forgotten, and yet the prayers of Silesian mystics still linger in some hearts. But today, things have changed; the painter and the monk have been drafted - we are one with the world.  The mind has lost that regal certainty which a c
Read more

Etel Adnan - To Be In A Time Of War

By Dilip -
NB: Etel Adnan, writer, poet, artist and musician was born in 1925 and raised in Beirut, Lebanon. Her mother was a Greek from Smyrna, her father, a high ranking Ottoman officer born in Damascus. This prose poem is the final chapter of her book  In the Heart of the Heart of Another Country .  Read more about her here  - DS To Be In A Time Of War To say nothing, do nothing, mark time, to bend, to straighten up, to blame oneself, to stand, to go toward the window, to change one’s mind in the process, to return to one’s chair, to stand again, to go to the bathroom, to close the door, to then open the door, to go to the kitchen, to not eat nor drink, to return to the table, to be bored, to take a few steps on the rug, to come close to the chimney, to look at it, to find it dull, to turn left until the main door, to come back to the room, to hesitate, to go on, just a bit, a trifle, to stop, to pull the right side of the curtain, then the other side, to stare at
Read more

After the Truth Shower

By Dilip -
Dear Readers Thank you for reading my blog for the past eleven years. (This is a link to the new one) During this time it has had nearly 1.7 million hits; and I have posted over 9500 posts covering a variety of themes. From July 11 to 19, 2022, my blog was withdrawn by the Blogger administration on account of what its machinery suspected to be 'Impersonation'. It took over a week and the efforts of several well-wishers to get it back online I thank them all for their kindness and goodwill  My blog has always been - and remains - non-commercial. I have used it for academic purposes; and to foster a culture of debate and informed commentary in civil society. Because it contains a large amount of material gathered and collated for over a decade, I cannot afford to lose its contents. I hope it will remain undisturbed now and function as an archive. However, I have decided to use a new blog on WordPress as a platform for my newest comments and posts The new blog is titled After the
Read more

Rudyard Kipling: critical essay by George Orwell (1942)

By Dilip -
Mother of Cities to me, For I was born in her gate, Between the palms and the sea, Where the world-end steamers wait  Rudyard Kipling , To the City of Bombay "Few people who have criticized England from the inside have said bitterer things about her than this gutter patriot" : George Orwell IT WAS a pity that Mr. Eliot should be so much on the defensive in the long essay with which he prefaces this selection of Kipling's poetry, but it was not to be avoided, because before one can even speak about Kipling one has to clear away a legend that has been created by two sets of people who have not read his works. Kipling is in the peculiar position of having been a byword for fifty years. During five literary generations every enlightened person has despised him, and at the end of that time nine-tenths of those enlightened persons are forgotten and Kipling is in some sense still there. Mr. Eliot never satisfactorily explains this fact, because in answering the shal
Read more