Labour in India and the COVID-19 Pandemic

Abstract

The fact that labour in India, in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic, has been trapped in an unprecedented crisis, in living memory, is widely acknowledged. The employment and livelihoods of the overwhelming majority of workers have taken huge hits, and a massive uncertainly continues to loom over their immediate foreseeable future. This article focuses on how the world of work in India has been impacted by the pandemic, and it seeks to investigate the ongoing challenges. However, the massive vulnerability of workers in the country, which has been brutally exposed in the current crisis, did not emerge overnight and needs to be situated against the backdrop of the so-called economic reforms, in particular those during the preceding 6 years of the current dispensation at the centre and its (mis)management. This is done in the first substantive section of the article, although very briefly. The second substantive section takes stock of the current conditions of the world of work, exacerbated by the pandemic, as it continues to evolve. The challenges confronting India’s working people at the current juncture are enormous, to say the least, but the ruling dispensation, at best, appears to be indifferent to their lives. We close the article with some concluding remarks and immediate policy pointers. JEL Classification: J21, J23, J46