The Significance of May 1
May 1 is doing a lot of work this year. It is Maharashtra Day — the day Bombay State was split in 1960 to give Marathi-speakers a state of their own. It is also International Workers’ Day, the day labour every year reminds the world it exists. And in 2026, the calendar lines up so that it is also Buddha Purnima. Three holidays. One question quietly running underneath all of them — who counts in a society, and who gets to decide? Editor’s Note: Kavya Agarwal This week’s stories are variations on that same question, dressed up in different policy clothes. Who counts as employed when AI takes 24,000 jobs from a single IT company in one year? Who counts as a worker when you drive an Uber? Who is fully visible in India’s first digital census, and what boxes does the form give you to tick? Who profits from the sun? Six signals from the past week. Read them with that question in mind. Who counts and who decides?
Who counts and who decides?