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MAY DAY! HAY DAY!

On this Labour Day, An Ode...


01 May 2020

Shubhrangshu Roy

Workers in India have forever lived in an unequal world.

In the 30 years of Economic Reforms, 15 of them under stewardship of the able Manmohan Singh starting 1991, first as Finance Minister, and then, since 2004, as Gandhi family’s handpicked Prime Minister, 90 per cent of the Indian labour force has not been given health, pension, housing or unemployment benefits.

They have never had permanency of employment.

Leave alone four hours of lockdown notice served a month ago, they have never even been given a four-minute retrenchment notice by corporate HR in the past 30 years.

Sad that we are only discovering their plight in the last 30 days of lockdown.

It speaks volumes about our journalism. Why, in the last three decades, even our journalists too have been doled out three-year dehari contracts, with no termination notice if the contract is not automatically renewed on time. And, as we learnt barely 15 days ago, they are sacked via sms chats, in contravention of the Working Journalists Act.

Do think about it!

Then, go, change your world.

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