Growing Precarity, Circular Migration, and the Lockdown in India
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Growing Precarity, Circular Migration, and the Lockdown in India Ravi Srivastava1
© Indian Society of Labour Economics 2020
Abstract The paper examines the nature of the migrant crisis in India after the country-wide lockdown in March 2020 and brings out the types of labour migrants who were severely adversely affected by the lockdown, leading to their exodus towards their native villages. It further assesses the government’s response and proposes some key policy imperatives. Keywords Migrant Crisis · Circular Migration · Precarity · India The COVID-19 pandemic has made the position of international migrants even more vulnerable and has exposed the poor living conditions in which international emigrant workers work and live in countries across the globe. However, in the case of India, the lockdown imposed to slow the spread of the pandemic created an unprecedented humanitarian crisis for internal migrants, revealing the vast magnitude of invisible and vulnerable migrants in India’s workforce across cities and states. In a public address to the nation on 19 March 2020, the Indian Prime Minister announced a “Janata (people’s) Curfew” on March 22, from morning to night, which was to be monitored by civil society organisations, and voluntarily observed. At that stage, India had experienced 3 deaths and 169 infections due to the COVID-19. Several trains were cancelled and flights reduced for the Janata curfew, but these cancellations continued after the “curfew”. On March 23, at 8 pm, the Prime Minster announced a country-wide lockdown effective from midnight, to last till 15 April 2020. The lockdown was introduced to ostensibly slowdown and break the transmission cycle of the virus, and people—except those engaged in essential services— were advised to stay indoors. The sudden lockdown left tens of millions of people stranded across India. These included students, travellers, pilgrims, and migrant workers. The government and the country were completely unprepared for what followed. Within a couple of days * Ravi Srivastava [email protected] 1
Centre for Employment Studies, Institute of Human Development, Delhi, India
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Vol.:(0123456789) ISLE
The Indian Journal of Labour Economics
of the lockdown, migrants started thronging highways and bus stands, prepared to go home anyhow. Between March 28 and 30, the government responded with a series of directives asking the migrants to return and stay indoors. When the numbers became unmanageable, some state governments stepped in with announcements to facilitate the interstate movement of the migrants. However, the central government came down heavily both on governments, which were seen to facilitate the movement of migrants, and on the migrants. The latter were forced into shelters and quarantines or pushed back to their shelters. On March 31, in response to a petition in the Supreme Court, the Government of India claimed that “not a single migrant was on the roads”. It further claimed that the attempted exodus of migrants was the result of a panic cre
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