- Title
- Migrant labourers, Covid-19 and working-class struggle in the time of pandemic: a report from Karnataka, India
- Creator
- Sirimane, Mallige; Thapliyal, Nisha
- Relation
- Interface : a Journal for and about Social Movements Vol. 12, Issue 1, p. 164-181
- Relation
- https://web-p-ebscohost-com.ezproxy.newcastle.edu.au/ehost/detail/detail?vid=5&sid=84830b41-cb71-4172-a9bc-b50cd47344b9%40redis&bdata=JnNpdGU9ZWhvc3QtbGl2ZQ%3d%3d#AN=144985345&db=sxi
- Publisher
- Interface
- Resource Type
- journal article
- Date
- 2020
- Description
- Since the imposition of the unplanned lockdown in India, Karnataka Jan Shakti has worked with stranded migrant labourers to respond to a range of issues including starvation, transportation to return home, sexual violence, Islamophobia and labour rights. Karnataka Jan Shakti (KJS, Karnataka People's Power) is a coalition of Left-leaning activist groups and individuals. For the last decade, it has mobilised historically oppressed groups on issues of economic and cultural justice including Dalit sanitation workers, Dalit university students, slumdwellers, peasants, nomadic tribes, and survivors of sexual violence. Our approach to collective struggle is shaped by the social analysis tools of Karl Marx, Dr. B.R. Ambedkar and Shankar Guha Niyogi. In this article, we document and analyse our struggle against situated forms of precarity in migrant lives shaped by class, caste, gender, age, and rural/urban geography which have been exacerbated by the Covid-19 pandemic. We also reflect on lessons for movement-building in a political milieu dominated by a hyper surveillant fascist state, communal media apparatus and accelerated, unregulated privatisation under the latest national slogan of Self-Reliant India (AtmaNirbhar Bharat).
- Subject
- migrant labourers; Covid-19 pandemic; India; learning in the struggle
- Identifier
- http://hdl.handle.net/1959.13/1438927
- Identifier
- uon:40764
- Identifier
- ISSN:2009-2431
- Language
- eng
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