Anuja .

Ashok Kumar is an unhurried man. His checked white shirt and denim pants are in stark contrast with the bright coloured animal figurines on the walls of the Basti Vikas Kendra (community welfare centre), which doubles up as a child care facility, in South Delhi’s Begumpur locality.
It is a hot afternoon and the centre is slowly beginning to fill with people, mostly women, who have come for the weekly meeting. Today’s topic of discussion is the Right to Information (RTI) Act, 2005.

“I work with fire. But this has been the hottest ever, even for me,” says Harilal Rajput, squinting in the blazing midday sun. Rajput, 41, is a chief fire worker at a brick kiln near the town of Danapur on the outskirts of Patna, capital of the eastern state of Bihar. He is a migrant worker; his wife, a farmer, lives in neighbouring Uttar Pradesh with their three children.

Street vendors in Delhi broadcasted weather warnings by putting up heat alert boards near their carts.

The meteorological department provided daily weather updates, including audio messages, which were circulated via WhatsApp to a larger circle of workers.

Improving awareness about extreme heat is the first step to building resilience, experts said.

Hungry and thirsty, Mohammed Tanveer walked and hitchhiked 1,900 km home after losing his job in the first coronavirus wave in 2020 - and, like many Indian migrants, has vowed never to work so far from his family again.
Some 11 million migrants travelled thousands of miles home in scorching heat, many dying of exhaustion or in accidents, after losing their jobs in one of the world's longest and strictest coronavirus lockdowns.

India’s Covid-19 lockdown sent millions of internal migrants back to their homes across the country. But when restrictions lifted, many women stayed behind and lost work, compounding layers of inequality.

Pandey feels that migrant workers like him, who travel back and forth – his wife and two children live in the village – and whose livelihoods have been hit by lockdowns should be prioritised for vaccination. But there is one big problem. “I have no idea where and how to get vaccinated,” he told Al Jazeera.

After being bested by the Congress-led Maha Vikas Aghadi in the Maharashtra Lok Sabha poll, the BJP, fresh from a victory in Haryana, is itching to beat the MVA with its Mahayuti alliance. Both sides have unveiled sops galore for the electorate. Who will prevail?
Mumbai/Palghar/Uran: Ranshet, a small village in Maharashtra’s Palghar district, is 130 kilometres away from Mantralaya, the seat of power in the state. Paddy farmer Ladki Vitthal Korda, 52, belongs to Karbat pada, a tribal hamlet...

Death of his brother on a railway track in Aurangabad district during the pandemic led to steel factory worker Birendra Singh vow to never leave his village
On the morning of 8 May, 2020, which was the 45th day of the nationwide lockdown to control the spread of Covid-19 pandemic, 16 migrant workers were mowed down by an empty freight train in Maharashtra’s Aurangabad district. The migrant workers were walking from Jalna to Bhusawal.

“I will go again. I am certain of that. But going back is difficult,” said Mahato. “The poor don’t have money to eat, who is going to give me money to go back. I am not the only one here, everyone has the same story.” Several young men in Bihar's Hulasi Tola, mostly between the ages of 25 to 35, described experiences similar to Mahato’s.

India urged to bring women into the workforce by creating female-friendly jobs and conditions as its population and economy grow
India to become world's most populous country in April
Despite booming economy, female workforce shrinks
Women-friendly jobs seen in short supply

New Delhi/Mumbai: Separated by more than 1,400 km, Shabnam Sheikh from Mumbai and Rupa Devi from New Delhi are unaware of each other's existence. Sheikh's job is to make ripped markings on 'distress jeans' while Devi strings together artificial garlands at home for a living.
Both Sheikh and Devi are home-based informal workers, who carry out paid work from their home or outside of the employer's workplace, and are near the bottom of India's labour chain.

“This is a special day in the history of our country…”
These were the opening remarks of a debate that took place on September 12, 1996, in the Lok Sabha, the Indian parliament’s lower house.

Preference for cities not too far from home, growing importance of children’s education and dipping bargaining power for wages, the pandemic had a lasting impact on migration decisions and patterns
Five years after India was put under one of the world’s strictest lockdown, there is an acute lack of empirical data capturing its long-term ramifications on India’s domestic labour migration. In the absence of numerical are observations by experts working with India’s internal migrant workforce.

“We took just one bag with us. It had bedsheets and some food. The lighter the load the easier it is to walk,” recalled Sampat Lall, 31. On 25 March 2020, Sampat and her husband Lakhan, 34, began what they described as “one of the longest walks” of their lives.

The Aam Aadmi Party (AAP), which is in power in Delhi and Punjab, is one state election away from becoming a national party. With a high-decibel campaign in the ongoing Gujarat elections, the party is hopeful of getting enough votes to be recognised as a state party in a fourth state (Goa is the third), which will automatically qualify it to become a national party.
The feat, if achieved, will be a significant political milestone for the party which is less than 10 years old.