Much has been written and spoken about the miseries of migrant workers, their continued distress and oppressed livelihood. Now and then they make headlines not for good reasons but for their lives in turmoil. This has happened in several countries but India stood out as worst example in the world. The way lockdown was promulgated with a notice of only four hours with no time left for the workers, the students, the pilgrims and other citizens who were away for health treatment or any other family reasons to return to their homes safely. Among these, the workers had suddenly lost their jobs, various kinds of livelihoods and even the places of residences.

In absence of any resources they walked for miles risking their lives along with families. The condition of children, women and old people was very pathetic and moving. They were humiliated, lathi charged, made to jump on roads like frogs, there was dangerous chemical spray on them in some places, the black ink writing on foreheads that I am lockdown breaker. They died in accidents, with hunger, lack of medical care on the way when fallen sick, dehydration and by committing suicides etc. Untold miseries of those who lost the only earning members of the family. The mishandling during lock down period further caused immense damage. Return migration has also brought sufferings and now the trend of re-return to villages has also started.

Modi government wasted initial four months from December 2019 upto March 2020 for not taking cognizance of the disease and making no preparations to deal with this health emergency. This government ignored Indian Parliament, the state governments, political parties, the mass organisations of workers, farmers, students, youth, women and several social organisations active in the society for various causes and chose the path of imposition of Disaster Management Act (DMA) instead of dealing the problem as health emergency which was termed so by World Health Organisation (WHO).

There was no proposal, guideline or advisory of imposing lockdown as strategy, there were other medical advisories as preventive measures. Total sudden lockdown of industry, businesses, trade, and all other human activities except essential services has actually led to severe economic crisis in the already recession ridden economy of our country due to the policies since Modi government took charge in 2014.

Using DMA with sudden lockdown is actually a well thought out strategy of the government to control the people by dealing the situation as law and order, as well as using the opportunity to push their agenda of privatisation and sale of public services and public sector enterprises, draconian changes in labour laws against workers ,to corporatize the land, changes in agriculture related enactments against the farmers, to design and control the education policy for sectarian and unquestioning mind set to be created as well as commercialising this fundamental right of Indian children, using the opportunity to perpetuate its agenda of hatred and division and to silence the voices of dissent and freedom of expression, to further weaken the democratic institutions, to push the foreign policy to the US- Israel nexus etc.

The shocking news of Indian GDP going down to minus 23.9 % is already creating panic amongst various sections of society. India tops in dip of GDP amongst Nations. The others in chronology stand as UK–minus20.4%, France-minus13.8%, Italy-minus12.4%,Canada-minus 12%,Germany- 10.1%,USA-minus9.5%, Japan-minus7.6%, China- plus3.2%.

Unemployment rate which had been worst in 45 years in 2019 is further rising with a speed never seen before. There was jobless growth for more than a decade in the country due to neo- Liberal economic model being pursued by respective governments which got expedited during Modi government and further deteriorated due to demonetisation and faulty GST implementations.

Modi government was already pushing its agenda of codification of 44 Central legislations on labour into four codes, ignoring all suggestions, recommendations and oppositions from the trade union movement of our country. It is that agenda of the government which has acquired acceleration in its speed to suppress various labour legislations by using the route of ordinances through the Governors in the states and also approvals of the decisions in the Cabinets of the State Governments.

This all is being pursued at the behest of Central Government which sent its circulars through Ministry of Labour to push through Labour law changes specifically Industrial Dispute Act, Contract Act, Factories Act, Equal Remuneration Act, Apprentice Act etc. and also insisting the state governments to implement fixed term employment and increase in the working hours from 8 to 12. The ground reality is that almost 90 percent of our informal economy workers have no protection of labour laws and those protected workers are also to loose their rightswith these moves of the government. The central government has undermined all its commitments to the International Labour Organisation (ILO) as well as to the International Covenants to respect human rights, to follow international labour standards and to defend the right to plurality of cultures, beliefs and practices.

By now various organisations and study groups have been doing lots of hard studies and surveys to bring forth several aspects of impacts of the policy framework of the government during covid-19 pandemic situation. The periodic details from CMIE reflects on the situation of unemployment, wage depression, wage cuts ,adverse impact on women employment as well as loss of employment, growing precarious conditions of work at work sites. Some studies have focussed on rising depression and anxiety specially amongst the younger generation as they happen to be the largest percentage of job losers in a scenario when the businesses and industry are employing workforce between 30 to 50% only, the trend is to take back the experienced workforce of age group 40 years and plus for the settling down of their business activities for once again to come to normalcy. The ground reality that highly qualified youngsters are seeking semi skilled or unskilled jobs as a survival strategy, the semi skilled have also entered into unskilled job profiles and the space for unskilled workers is shrinking.

The pandemic could not dampen the fighting spirit of the working class. Following all medical advisories the agitations have been take up ,the resistance is growing, the strike actions have been taken up, more such actions are forthcoming in various sectors and another nationwide protest is planned for the coming 23rd September. The battle will go on for building an exploitation free society based on equality and justice. (IPA Service)