When Prime Minister Narendra Modi announced a sudden and complete lockdown last March to control Covid-19, it triggered an exodus of the de...
When Prime Minister Narendra Modi announced a sudden and complete lockdown last March to control Covid-19, it triggered an exodus of the desperate. Visuals of working-class migrant labourers pouring out of cities and walking hundreds of kilometres to reach their villages became the defining image of the pandemic in India.
This year, as a gigantic second wave courses through the country, a few things are visibly different: there is no blanket nation-wide lockdown, inter-state transport is still running, and migrant workers are not trudging home on foot.
But job loss, food insecurity and economic vulnerability are once again a looming reality for millions of urban informal workers and daily wage earners. In the absence of substantial relief measures by state governments or the Centre, a migrant “exodus” has resumed – this time in buses and trains.
“If I am not earning enough to pay rent or buy rations here, what is the point of staying in the city?” said Ramu Prajapati, an autodriver in Mumbai who is 200th on the waiting list of a train to Jaunpur, the Uttar Pradesh district where his village lies. “Last year I spent two months of the lockdown in Mumbai hoping it would end, but I had to survive on donations. This time I...
