Average work over the last one month during the second wave A recent civil society survey, conducted to analyse the impact of the second Covid wave among informal sector workers of Gujarat and Rajasthan has, found that they were able to get work for just about 18 days in a month on an average. “In Ahmedabad construction workers at the nakas reported getting work for just eight days in a month”, the survey report, forwarded by the by the Centre for Labour Research and Action (CLRA) to Counterview, said, adding, “The basti residents of Ahmedabad reported just seven days of work.”

By Our Representative  Delhi-based civil rights organisation, Dalit Adivasi Shakti Adhikar Manch (DASAM), along with the National Alliance of People’s Movement (NAPM), Delhi Solidarity Group (DSG) and the Magadha Foundation, during recent interactions with “worst affected” waste pickers’ and sewer sanitation workers’ families, has said, during the second wave of Covid-19, their condition “deteriorated” with families “forced to live in a very pathetic condition due to the lockdown.”

Cyrus Poonwalla, Pankaj Patel At least nine people have become new billionaires since the beginning of the Covid pandemic, thanks to the excessive profits pharmaceutical corporations with monopolies on Covid vaccines are making, the  People’s Vaccine Alliance  (PVA), a global alliance advocating its availability free of charge to all people in all countries, has revealed ahead of the G20 leaders Global Health Summit.

KP Sasi, a well-known Left-wing film director and cartoonist from Thrissur, Kerala, currently based in Bengaluru, has come up with a 12-point charter on what he calls Socialism of a Third Kind. Sent in an email alert via Dalit Media Watch, Sasi, who is son of late K Damodaran, a Marxist theoretician and writer and one of the founder leaders of the Communist Party in India, provides his perspective of the types of equal status he thinks socialism should have. Though I found it interesting, I didn’t find in any of his 12 points what exactly his view on economy is – whether there could be economic equality, especially at a time when even Marxists agree private capital is a must for development in view of the fact that the productive forces are not ripe enough to change relations of production, supposed to be a precondition of socialism. Be that as it may, I found the 12 point charter by Sasi interesting, coming as it does from a person who has made powerful documentaries like "A Va...

A person getting vaccinated at Urban Health Centre, Vejalpur Amidst news of vaccine shortage, on one hand, and “rush” and “scramble” for it at several spots to get vaccinated in Ahmedabad, I was reminded of what happened with me while getting by second Covid-19 vaccine jab. I got my first vaccine at the local Urban Health Centre (UHC) in Vejalpur village, Ahmedabad, on March 5 after getting myself registered online on the website Government of India has especially created for those seeking to do it. It was a smooth going for the first vaccine. It was Covishield, Oxford’s Astra Zeneca’s India version, being produced by the Serum Institute in Pune. Those who had registered online had no issues: After checking on the computer, they were asked to produce their ID and move to get vaccine. Others, who had not registered online, were asked to wait for manual registration. No sooner I got the first vaccine, I was told, I would receive an SMS on when to come next for the second dose, which was...

A Stranded Workers Action Network (SWAN) survey has said that just about 81% of the workers, who are either still stranded during the second pandemic wave or are in their homes, asserted they are currently out of job due to locally declared lockdowns/ restrictions.

Two days back, a veteran journalist based in Patna, previously with the Times of India, Ahmedabad, phoned me up to inform me that he had a sad news: Swarnakanta Varma, a retired Gujarat cadre IAS bureaucrat, who was acting chief secretary on the dastardly Godhra train burning day, February 27, 2002, which triggered one of the worst ever communal riots in Gujarat, has passed away due to Covid. “I have been informed about this from a friend in Jaipur, where she breathed her last”, Law Kumar Mishra said. I would interact with Varma, who, now I learn, was a Dalit, though during my stint in Gandhinagar. No sooner I learned by the sad news, I contacted a senior IAS official, also retired. “She was very bold, I must say”, this bureaucrat told me, telling me about an event about which I knew only partially: That Narendra Modi, after he became chief minister of Gujarat in October 2001, during a meeting with state IAS bureaucrats, objected to her wearing “sleeveless blouse.” I recall, Modi’s re...