The informal challenge.

INFORMAL workers everywhere are the most threatened by the situation arising out of the Covid-19 pandemic. An ILO report has acknowledged this fact as it builds a case for maximum possible protection for the 1.6bn informal-sector workers across the globe. The report focuses on the double-edged sword that these countable, yet in so many ways unrecognised and exploited, workers have been exposed to thanks to the dangerous virus that targets both lives and livelihoods. These informal workers ie fruit vendors, domestic help, doorstep salesmen, gardeners, etc, whose jobs have been insecure even in better times, are perhaps the earliest economic martyrs of Covid-19. Already many of them - men as well as a large number of women with almost invisible jobs - have received the bad news that a world with closed doors cannot support the type of trade or service they offer. The numbers all over are going to rise before policymakers go back to the drawing board to redesign the world along the lines of hopefully more humane economic principles.

Health and exposure to disease has been one...