(a) Elucidate the main problems and challenges faced by the migrant labourers in the recent 'Lockdown period'. 20 (b) Explain…

(a) Problems and challenges of migrant labourers during the lockdown

The lockdown announced on 24 March 2020 with four hours' notice hit circular migrants hardest, because they combine informal work, no local entitlements and no urban housing.

• Livelihood: wages stopped overnight; contractors and employers disappeared; savings lasted days; rent and debt pressure continued.
• Food and shelter: workers without local ration cards were excluded from the PDS (portability was not yet universal); crowded rented rooms and worksites became unsafe and unaffordable.
• Mobility: with trains and buses suspended, many walked hundreds of kilometres home. Exhaustion and accidents killed several, for example the Aurangabad rail accident of 8 May 2020 (16 dead). Shramik Special trains began only on 1 May.
• Legal and institutional gaps: the Inter-State Migrant Workmen Act, 1979 (now subsumed in the Occupational Safety, Health and Working Conditions Code, 2020) was poorly enforced. Registration, journey allowance and portable welfare existed mostly on paper, and no reliable migrant database existed.
• Social: stigma on return, quarantine rules, and women, children and the elderly facing special hardship.

Sociologically, Jan Breman's "footloose labour" captures the contradiction: cities depend on flexible labour but deny it citizenship and a safety net. The Supreme Court took suo motu cognisance (In Re: Problems and Miseries of Migrant Labourers, 2020) and directed free transport, food and shelter, and registration of workers returning home.

(b) Dialectical relationship between political parties and pressure groups

Parties aggregate wide interests to capture state power; pressure groups articulate sectional demands without seeking office. Their relationship is dialectical because each depends on and also constrains the other.

• Mutual dependence: parties need pressure groups for mobilisation, votes, funds and legitimacy; groups need parties to convert demands into law and policy.
• Tension: parties dilute or co-opt group demands for electoral breadth; groups keep autonomy to hold parties accountable.
• Reciprocal transformation: pressure groups turn into parties, and parties create their own front organisations.

Indian examples: trade unions linked to parties (CITU with CPI(M), INTUC with Congress) while pushing them towards pro-labour positions; the Vanniyar Sangam leading to the Pattali Makkal Katchi (1989); BAMCEF and DS4 leading to the Bahujan Samaj Party (1984); the Samyukt Kisan Morcha in the 2020–21 farm-law protests, which kept formal distance from parties yet drew support across party lines until the laws were repealed in 2021.

Parties thus achieve goals through groups' mobilising capacity, and groups achieve theirs through parties' access to power; both are changed in the process.

(c) Growth of religious revivalism in the present day

Religious revivalism is the collective effort to restore or assert religious identity in public life. It differs from private religiosity and from fundamentalism, which insists on doctrinal literalism. Its present forms include Hindutva mobilisation in India, Islamist movements in several countries, and Pentecostal-Charismatic growth in Latin America, Africa and parts of Asia.

Causes: anxiety from rapid globalisation and marketisation, which pushes people towards what Manuel Castells calls "resistance identities"; electoral competition that rewards identity mobilisation; and digital media that spread and harden group identities. Its growth is checked by constitutional secularism, rights assertions by marginalised groups, and long syncretic traditions.