Plight of migrant workers
The last two decades witnessed massive migration of Assam's rural population to the metropolises in search of livelihood due to the state's unemployment problem of gargantuan proportion. The recent tragic death of four youths from Assam, working in a private company in Bengaluru, has once again brought to the fore the plight of young people working and living under alleged unsafe conditions in other states. Unless there are concrete steps from the government to ease the situation instead of creating beneficiaries in very large numbers, lakhs of young people will continue to work in Kerala, Karnataka, Tamil Nadu and Delhi in hazardous environments with lower wages. The government should launch a dedicated portal and grievance helpline for the registration of migrant workers employed outside. There is an urgent need to protect the state's migrant workers from getting deprived of state-provided social protection programmes like food security, healthcare and insurance. The government, as well as various social organisations, should take the initiative to make the state's informal workers aware of the schemes that are meant to stop them from going to other states for employment. We urgently need to evolve a mechanism for tracking migrant workers.
Iqbal Saikia, Guwahati.
Manpreet’s omission
The dropping of midfielder Manpreet Singh, forward Dilpreet Singh and goalkeeper Krishna Bahadur Pathak from the 33-member probables for the ongoing national preparatory camp leading to the FIH Pro League season beginning in late February has come as a surprise. Going by form, at least a couple of them warranted a place. But the explanation provided by "insiders" is different: India's sub-par performance in the December series against South Africa was partly attributed to "indiscipline", as a player reportedly lost consciousness consequent to consumption of a chewing gum laced with a banned substance provided by the trio, which led to the former missing crucial matches.
Nothing can supplant discipline, but the omission of Manpreet is disturbing, as the veteran was part of two consecutive Olympics bronze-medal-winning Indian teams. Additionally, this is the first time in nearly 15 years that Manpreet finds himself on the sidelines. Furthermore, coach Craig Fulton is said to have offered to quit, piqued by the turn of events, but was asked to stay put. Could things have been handled better?
Dr Ganapathi Bhat
(gbhat13@gmail.com)