When the COVID-19 lockdown began in West Bengal in 2020, a number of students from Jadavpur University of Kolkata came together to stand up with the people in the face of the grave crisis. The lockdown was a threat to the employment of many belonging to the underprivileged sections of society. The slum dwellers, daily wage laborers, domestic workers faced[Read More...]
Shimla: The lockdown reached the remote Lahaul-Spiti district of Himachal Pradesh before the Covid pandemic did. Farmers, who suddenly had no way to send their produce outside their region, found a simple solution. They began to host farmers markets called Apni Mandi (Our Market) across the valley. When the initiative earned them profits, farmers were inspired to grow food[Read More...]
The Basor community of Madhya Pradesh and Uttar Pradesh are still reeling with the losses of the pandemic as it brought their business – making household items of bamboo – to a screeching halt. Depending upon benevolent supporters and NGOs for ration, the members of the Basor community, today have no alternative livelihood. The popularity of plastic in the last[Read More...]
They are called ‘chitmahals’ or ‘paper palaces’. For decades, the people living in these twilight zones on the border between India and Bangladesh have been searching for citizenship, constitutional rights and a national identity. Over 15,000 people live in these enclaves on the Indian side of the border and in make-shift camps which have come up in recent times near[Read More...]
With 22 million passengers every day the Indian railways is second only to China globally in terms of the number of people transported. Since the onset of the Covid pandemic in early 2020 however, hundreds of train services have been shut down and traffic plummeted with big revenue losses. While this has not made much difference to the India’s urban[Read More...]
On 3rd October 2021 Mamata Banerjee, the incumbent chief minister of West Bengal – with a reputation as street-fighting politician, won a by-election at Bhabanipur, to secure her chief ministerial chair. Ironically, the very next day, the West Bengal police cracked down on students holding demonstrations demanding opening of the schools and colleges in the state. Discontent has been brewing[Read More...]
The ongoing Covid pandemic has affected the Raika and Rebari community in Rajasthan, known to herd camels for a livelihood for centuries. The Raika community, who are pastoralists, have been facing hardships since 2015 with the decline in the camel population and its trade but the outbreak of Covid has put them on the brink of economic disaster. The community[Read More...]
Dhanbad: Ray Talkies in Jharkhand’s Dhanbad has screened many a Bollywood blockbuster, seeing its packed audiences ride the emotions since 1952. Its filmy fever, however, was broken by the Covid pandemic, during which the government did not allow cinemas to function. Last month, the government reallowed cinemas to open with caution. “But, only five per cent of people returned to[Read More...]
With Indian Army recruitment exams halted for over a year and a half, several aspirants who had been preparing for years are faced with bitter disappointment at the lost opportunity to escape debt-induced poverty. Nashik: Clearing the General Duty Soldier Exam to join the Indian Army is considered an aspirational, life-changing opportunity for young men across rural Nashik. Many youngsters[Read More...]
Even as the fear of the third Covid wave lingers, for the sex workers in Kolkata and other districts of Bengal, life is just about limping back to a fragmented, broken and incomplete sense of ‘normalcy’. This is but a semblance of normalcy, coming as it does after a prolonged period of hardship and difficulty. A ‘sense of normalcy’, which[Read More...]
