Labouring Lives: Hunger, Precarity and Despair amid Lockdown

This report, titled Labouring Lives: Hunger, Precarity and Despair amid Lockdown, was published on June 19, 2020. It has been produced by the Centre for Equity Studies, New Delhi; Karwan-e-Mohabbat (a New Delhi-based organisation that works issues related to hate crimes), and the Delhi Research Group (an informal network of scholars).The 55-page report presents the results of a survey on unemployment and hunger among migrant and other workers in urban and rural India, after the Covid-19 lockdown was announced on March 24. A total of 1,405 interviews were conducted– most of them on the telephone – between May 25 and June 10, 2020. The respondents were from Assam, Bihar, Delhi and the National Capital Region, Haryana, Himachal Pradesh, Jharkhand, Rajasthan and Uttar Pradesh.The report’s 11 chapters cover the 'Context of this Study' (chapter 1), 'Focus of the Survey' (chapter 2), 'Methodology & rationale of the Survey' (chapter 3), 'Income and employment in the pre-lockdown period' (chapter 4), 'Job-Loss during lockdown and perceived future about employment' (chapter 5), 'Hunger and Food Security' (chapter 6), 'Social and state support' (chapter 7), 'Mechanisms to Access to Public Services' (chapter 8), 'Conclusion' (chapter 9),  'Key Takeaways of the Study' (chapter 10) and the 'Way Forward' (chapter 11).