Key research questions

What is the ‘acquis’ in labour rights and the social protection of workers at the onset of the pandemic in Delhi, Kerala (India) and Sri Lanka?
What has been the effect of the pandemic on the social protection of workers in Delhi, Kerala, (India) and Sri Lanka? Do we see a reinforcement of existing labour protection regimes or the parallel erosion of labour rights across all cases?
What is the effect of centralization (India) and militarization (Sri Lanka) on labour protection? How is (organized and unorganised) labour responding to such shifts and changes?
What explains cross-case and within case temporal and regional variations in the trajectory of labour protection regimes since the pandemic. The most notable factors to look out for are:

different labour market characteristics: do distinctions between primary, secondary and tertiary sector employment together with casual and migrant work generate the need for distinct social protection mechanisms?
strength and cohesiveness of organized labour: Do the differently placed union strengths in the distinction locations for India (Kerala and Delhi) and Sri Lanka weigh more heavily on the state’s response to COVID-19, generating differentiated and/or deeper universal worker protection policies?
access of organized labour to political power: To what extent has organized labour played a key role in mediating state-capital-labour relations in the current context? What forms do they take within the CoVID-19 crisis? Is there a politicization, ethnicization or ethno-nationalization of unions that may have strengthened or diluted social provisioning during the crisis?