AS the greatest man made humanitarian crisis since independence plays out across India, prevailing inequalities get intensified due to government policies and approaches during the arbitrarily declared, unplanned lockdown. The curtain of invisibility that hitherto concealed the existence of 10 crore workers, termed migrant workers, has been torn asunder through myriad images of horrendous suffering. This huge section of India’s labour force or rather India’s life force are being stripped of their rights as equal citizens of India.

KERALA’s fight against the deadly Covid-19 pandemic has been multi-pronged. Firstly, the deadly virus itself, second an opposition that has been busy working overtime to derail the efforts of the state government by leading a malicious campaign to malign the reputation of the state and the government, and then a union government with a discriminatory attitude.

MUMBAI, the financial, commercial and entertainment nerve centre of India, has been under serious distress because of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Mumbai generates 33 per cent of the country’s income tax, 60 per cent of custom duty, 20 per cent of central excise duty, and 40 per cent of the foreign trade, 25 per cent of industrial output, 70 per cent of capital formation, 10 per cent of factory employment. The city is one of the top 10 centres of global financial flow, contributing over 6 per cent of India’s GDP. Large numbers of financial institutions have their head office in Mumbai

A FASCIST leader wants to leave an imprint of his glory; the footprint does not just limit to the polity, rather extends to a wide spectrum that includes art and architecture. If the construction of Volksshalle was the idea of Hitler, designed and planned by Albert Speer, the proposal of construction of a new parliament building along with the redevelopment of the Central Vista in Delhi by Modi and his prime architect, Bimal Patel is another parallel, to a similar idea.

SINCE the very outset, thousands of migrant workers with the back breaking huge sacks trudging along, often with wives and children for hundreds of kilometers have been the unputdownable images that have refused to leave us. Since the abrupt announcement of the national lockdown with a notice of four hours, such images have come to haunt us. Thousands of migrant workers at the Anand Vihar bus station immediately after the announcement marked their arrival in the increasingly intense discourse on our response to Covid pandemic.