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13. Migrants in Torment (Clifton D’Rozario, Rajendran Narayanan, Rohini Mohan)
Restoring Dignity and Trust
Speakers
Journalist Rohini Mohan talks to Clifton D’ Rozario and Rajendran Narayanan on the dire challenges faced by millions of migrant workers stranded across India during the COVID-19 pandemic and lockdown.
Rohini Mohan (@rohini_mohan) is an award-winning independent journalist based in Bangalore, writing on human rights and politics.
Clifton D’ Rozario (@clifroz) is a practicing advocate with Manthan Law, and is the National Secretary, All India Central Council of Trade Unions (AICCTU) and the State Secretary CPI (ML) Liberation, Karnataka.
Rajendran Narayanan (@rajendran_naray) is an assistant professor at Azim Premji University, and a volunteer for the Stranded Workers Action Network (SWAN – @ strandedworkers).
Suggested readings:
32 Days and Counting: COVID-19 Lockdown, Migrant Workers, and the Inadequacy of Welfare Measures in India. Report by SWAN.
Explained: Indian Migrants across India, by the Indian Express.
Errata: 50 crore migrants mentioned needs to be 10 crores.
Speakers
Clifton Rozario
Practicing advocate with “Manthan Law”.
National Secretary, All India Central Council of Trade Unions (AICCTU)
State Secretary CPI(ML)Liberation
Rajendran Narayanan
Rajendran is an Assistant Professor in the School of Arts and Sciences at Azim premji University. After completing his Ph.D in statistics from Cornell University, he has held teaching and research positions at the Indian Statistical Institute, Kolkata, Cornell University, Ithaca and Ashoka University, Sonepat. In his doctoral work, he explored theoretical questions pertaining to eigenvalues of random matrices and shrinkage estimation in constrained regression problems. He has gradually become an interpoler to the social sciences and is a rural development practitioner.
The Right to Information (RTI) has been a landmark law to increase transparency and accountability of the government. In this regard, Social Audits have been a powerful mechanism of monitoring and participation for the marginalised sections to know their rights and entitlements and act based on that knowledge. Social audits entail culling out and presenting relevant information in a manner that is most useful to beneficiaries of programmes such as the NREGA. The information can then be used to conduct public hearings leading to increased democratic engagement and participation. Rajendran works with an array of researchers and activists from various civil society organisations across several states in designing and developing “bottom-up” Janata Information Systems (JIS). Such information can then be used for continuous monitoring of government programmes and social audits. He is also interested in understanding what the proliferation of data, and over-reliance on technological processes mean for rural development and participatory democracy.
Prior to his Ph.D, Rajendran completed his Bachelors in Statistics (hons), with Mathematics, & Economics as ancillaries from St. Xavier’s College, Kolkata followed by a Masters from the Department of Mathematics, IIT Bombay.
The SWAN report – https://covid19socialsecurity.files.wordpress.com/2020/05/32-days-and-counting_swan.pdf
Rohini Mohan
Rohini Mohan is a Bangalore-based independent journalist writing on human rights and politics. She has written for publications including The New York Times, Harper’s, Time, The Hindu, Economic Times, Foreign Policy, The Caravan and Huffington Post. She is the author of The Seasons of Trouble: Life Amid the Ruins of Sri Lanka’s Civil War.
Read her stories on the citizenship issue here, here and here.
