Wada Na Todo Abhiyan WNTA/GCAP India has published a statement on the impact of the COVID-19 emergency in India:

“93% of labour in India work in the informal sector – casual, migrant and self-employed without labour protection or social security. They are daily wage workers and the lockdown affects their daily wages, livelihood, access to food and health care. Migrants and urban poor live in congested slums and ghettos with negligible access to water, hygiene and sanitation. The lockdown has resulted in migrant workers leaving their urban locations and travelling back to their homelands, posing spread of the disease among themselves and to the faraway places they are moving to.

In a diverse country like India, large population groups are also vulnerable to social exclusion, discrimination and unequal access to state resources and protection – Adivasis, Dalits, the Muslim minority, LGBTQIA+, PWDs, internally displaced and refugees, bonded labour and victims of trafficking, homeless and street dwellers, street children and orphans, the aged, single women, sex workers to name some of them.”

Read the full statement.

GCAP India webpage: https://gcap.global/coalition/india