Last week, India crossed the somber milestone of one crore confirmed cases of Covid-19 infections. The lockdown announced by Prime Ministe...
Last week, India crossed the somber milestone of one crore confirmed cases of Covid-19 infections. The lockdown announced by Prime Minister Narendra Modi in March resulted in many hardships for Indians, especially for the millions of migrant workers who were stranded in urban centers without any work and with little savings. But the lockdown it failed to contain the spread of the coronavirus.
The government decided to effect Unlock phase on June 1, even when Covid-19 cases were on a steep rise in most parts of the country. The peak of the disease curve came several months later, in September.
Despite experiencing a lockdown that was arguably the most draconian anywhere in the world, Covid-19 spread widely across India. It is widely assumed that the Shramik Special trains, which were run from May 1 to allow stranded migrant workers to travel back to their home states, were responsible for this spread.
Any casual observer would agree that it is the conventional wisdom that the blame for the spread of the virus to rural India, even if it is inadvertently, lies with the workers who had traveled on these trains. A recent New York Times article makes a similar argument that the virus, hitherto concentrated in the cities, was taken to rural areas in...
