“Covid-19 and the Migrant Child”: A report

Swagata Mondal reports on a webinar titled ‘Covid-19 and the Migrant Child’ by Sreetapa Chakrabarty. organized by the Bengal Institute of Political Studies (BIPS) as a part of its Emerging Scholars Online Lecture Series on 13th June, 2020.

A brief note on Floods and Erosion in Assam: Problems without Prospects

In Assam, for those who perhaps do not directly suffer, floods and erosion are an annual affair that come and leave with the monsoon. Every coming year is equally or more devastating than the earlier one. Mridugunjan Deka makes a case on the seriousness of the issue, using publicly available and accessible government data sources. 

The Health Crisis on the Northern Mexico Border – A Report

On the 28^th of July, 2020, the Harvard Global Health Institute (HGHI) and Boston College School of Social Work organized a webinar titled “The Health Crisis on the Northern Mexico Border: Cross-Border Implications of U.S Immigration Policies”. It focused on the ongoing health crisis, specifically in the COVID situation, faced by the asylum seekers and prospective immigrants into the United States of America, in the northern border of Mexico. Debayan Das Gupta reports.

Migration, Racism and the Corona Virus pandemic

Omen Achom writes of his long experience of racism, brought to a head during the Coronavirus pandemic. originally from Manipur, Omen stayed with his friend in a Telangana village to pass the lockdown peacefully, before returning home.

Covid-19: Redrawn Borders, Redefined Lives – A Report

 On 8th July 2020, the Calcutta Research Group (CRG), in collaboration with the Rosa Luxemburg Stiftung   and Institute of Human Sciences, Vienna, organised a webinar which sought to address the sudden visibility of India’s migrant workers and questions regarding borders, inequality, public health and care. Keeping in mind that the coronavirus pandemic has emerged not simply as a public health and economic crisis but also as one that has thrown migrant workers into deep turmoil, the webinar sought to interrogate issues of movement, sovereignty, governance, and borders between people, societies and states. Annesha Saha reports.

DISEASE AND THE DYNAMICS OF OTHERING: A Report

 Report by Priyadarshini Chatterjee on  ‘Disease and the Dynamics of Othering’, a webinar organised by Manikchak College, Malda on 9th June, 2020.

The desire to eat, and eat unapologetically: reflections on the meaning of home via Axone

Deboleena Sengupta invokes her personal experiences and contemporary politics while reviewing the Netflix film Axone.

‘Borders of an Epidemic: Covid-19 and Migrant Workers’ Book Discussion: Ranabir Samaddar, Sekhar Bandyopadhyay, Douglas Hill

Sukanya Bhattacharya reports on a discussion around Borders of an Epidemic: Covid 19 and the Migrant Workers, organised by New Zealand India Research Institute, on 24th June, 2020.

Kolkata Dialogues: Sundarbans, the Climate Canary

Nirajana Chakraborty reports on the third edition of Alliance francaise du Bengale’s Kolkata Dialogues, focusing on the environmental importance of the Sundarbans, its history, geographies and policy impacts.

Report on the Webinar: ‘Migrants, Morality, Middle Class and Pandemic’ by Rakesh M. Krishnan

The current pandemic and the consequent travesty that the migrant labourers have had to face has generated an unprecedented response from Indian society. Most of the middle and upper class had come out on social media to contribute to the growing discussion about the plight of the labourers. However, most of these responses are short-lived, individual and singular in nature. The speaker Rakesh M. Krishnan put up a comparative picture where on one hand, middle class people share news articles about the labourer’s death and right after that, share pictures of some delicacy they have cooked along with the rest of their family in their protected homes. This dichotomy has existed for a long time in society but has probably become even more apparent in the present context. Hence, the narrative of ‘3Ms’ – migrants, morality and middle class in the backdrop of a pandemic that Krishnan builds is an important narrative which is bound to be uncomfortable but is also necessary. Sukanya Bhattacharya reports on the webinar organized by Christ University Trivandrum on 22^nd June, 2020.