Of love, longing and loneliness in an empty Assam village
The Deka family lives all alone in their ancestral home in one of Assam’s most flood-prone regions, unable to afford land or migrate elsewhere
March 2026
The shadow of conflict stretches from Manipur to Munrika
Women from strife-torn Manipur migrated to New Delhi’s North-Eastern hub of Munrika to rebuild their lives, but found insecure jobs, hardship and discrimination
The anatomy of a protest: Why workers across refineries in India are striking work?
From Panipat to Surat and Barauni, recent protests by workers constructing crucial petroleum oil refineries across India flag stagnant wages and precarious contracts
In Telangana’s withering grape farms, workers toil to sustain the harvest
On Hyderabad’s. outskirts, migrant workers from Bihar, Uttar Pradesh, Odisha and West Bengal face an uncertain future as rapid urbanisation and new industries eat into farms, shrinking their size and jobs
‘We can’t blame anyone who migrates’: North Karnataka’s khana weavers speak of its glorious past and difficult present
Despite recent efforts to revive khana, a fabric woven for saree blouses only in Guledggudda town, weavers tell a long history of migration to cities in search of better-paying work
Narratives for impact: Storytelling skills for development professionals
Many organisations working in the development sector are producing important work on the ground, but these efforts remain insufficiently communicated beyond reports and documentation
‘Each brick carries the mark of a worker’s hand, but once it becomes part of a wall or a building that trace disappears’
Through his Kochi-Muziris Biennale installation, Only the Earth Knows Their Labour, artist Birender Kumar Yadav reflects on seasonal migration, precarious labour and the lives of brick kiln workers, evoking their presence through traces rather than bodies.
India’s Gulf migration model faces a new test
The migrant workforce in the Gulf has weathered many geopolitical tensions and economic downturns in the past. But the ongoing West Asia conflict could have a far greater impact with the uncertainties already beginning to reshape economies and labour markets.
‘Waiting for flights to resume’: Gulf-bound Indian workers in limbo as war disrupts travel
Flight disruptions caused by the West Asia conflict have forced Indian workers headed there to stay back, depriving many of better prospects and pushing them into debt and uncertainty
Inside India’s Scam Economy
Snigdha Poonam, journalist and author of ‘Scamlands: Inside the Asian Empire of Fraud that Preys on the World’, unpack the social, economic, and migration stories behind India’s scam networks on this podcast
