India coronavirus dispatch: Why heart surgeries have got scaled back



Here is a selection of important Covid-19-related articles in Indian news publications. From the informal Indian economy in the time of a pandemic, to making cities liveable for migrants after lockdown, and why Mumbai is still struggling to cope with coronavirus — read these and more in today’s India dispatch.

Expert Speak
Migrant labourers are the most disenfranchised invisible citizens: For a majority of migrant labourers, migration is either a livelihood accumulation strategy or survival risk-reducing strategy, whichever way we define the nature of migration. Migration studies also confirm that migrant labourers are the most exploited and disenfranchised invisible citizens. Read this interview with political scientist Ashwani Kumar, whose forthcoming co-edited book Migration and Mobility is to be out soon. Kumar speaks on migration, inter-state workers and amendment to the Inter-State Migrant Workers Act, 1979. 

Managing Covid-19
Govt would have done well to heed experts: In their second joint statement, a Covid-19 task force of the Indian Public Health Association (IPHA), Indian Association of Preventive and Social Medicine (IAPSM) and Indian Association of Epidemiologists (IAE) has stated that the current situation in India with regard to the coronavirus cases could have been avoided if migrant workers had been allowed to go home before a lockdown was imposed.

Why Mumbai is still struggling to cope with coronavirus: Hospital wards have corpses left unattended in hallways. Patients are asked to sleep on the floor until beds open up. A woman with brain damage dies because she is refused medical help until her family would prove she is virus-free. The public healthcare system in Mumbai, epicentre of India’s worsening coronavirus outbreak, is overwhelmed as Covid-19 patients pour in and hospital staff work around the clock. Medical care for non-coronavirus patients has basically been shut off for lack of resources.

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