Migrant labourers have fled India’s cities – the old and frail walking with sticks, couples struggling with infants and luggage, sobbing children trailing behind – trudging hundreds of kilometres back to their native villages. Prime Minister Narendra Modi announced a national lockdown to control the Covid-19 pandemic with four hours’ notice, confining 1.3 billion people to their homes. The pandemic exposed precarious living conditions for the nation’s poor in overcrowded shanties where social distancing and handwashing sound like a cruel joke. More than 85 per cent of the country’s workforce toil in the informal economy, according to the International Labour Organisation. As many as a third of the population are internal migrants. The move may have exacerbated Covid-19’s spread. Millions of poor migrants defied orders to stay indoors. With factories and businesses closed and no jobs, savings or social security to cushion them, this disempowered demographic left cities where they could not afford food. Many migrants come from less-developed states to escape poverty or conflict to work as seasonal labour in urban factories. They build roads, malls and houses or pull rickshaws, clean homes and work as vendors. They contribute 50 per cent of India’s national income and constitute nearly 30 per cent of its human capital base, according to the government’s Economic Survey 2018-19. Experts fear the humanitarian crisis will push this segment further into penury, the ILO noted in a report on Covid-19 and migration, warning of “catastrophic consequences” for about 400 million people in India’s informal economy. A World Bank study is equally grim: “Lockdowns, loss of employment and social distancing prompted a chaotic and painful process of mass return for internal migrants in India and many countries in Latin America,” it stated. The bank exhorted the government to include internal migrants in health services, cash transfer and other social programmes while protecting them from discrimination. Though the central and state governments responded to the crisis with a 1.7 trillion rupee (US$22.5 billion) package and some direct cash transfers , thousands cannot access these schemes. Activists and policy analysts say the fiscal package is woefully inadequate. “Every other country hit by the Covid-19 pandemic has done more for its poor and working people than the Indian government,” wrote Brinda Karat, former Rajya Sabha member of parliament. She deplored the government for writing off bad loans, primarily for corporations, and not saving the poor from starvation. Indian economist and Nobel laureate Abhijit Banerjee also offered criticism. “India hasn’t discussed a large enough package,” he said. “We are still talking about 1 per cent of GDP. The US has gone for 10 per cent of GDP.” India faces humanitarian catastrophe as coronavirus lockdown hits poor Following outrage over the government’s response, Modi announced a second package worth US$277 billion. However, economists suggest it caters more to long-term economic uplift through fiscal measures rather than putting cash in the hands of the poor. Analysts scrutinising details provided by Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman concluded that the additional spending is far less than the 10 per cent of GDP the government suggested. Some state governments scrambled to help the needy, organising trains and buses to ferry them to their hometowns. However, this became mired in controversy over lack of clarity about who would pay. The governments announced the journeys would be free, yet migrants showed receipts for full payments. This presented an image of running migrants out of communities. Some employers did not want to lose workers. The government abruptly cancelled special trains from Karnataka, for example, that were returning thousands of migrants stranded by the lockdown, saying construction activities resuming in the state would need workers. This triggered a furore, with critics lashing out at the government for treating migrants like “bonded labour”. Authorities rescinded their decision. The most enduring image from the protracted Covid-19 confinement is thousands of migrant workers pushed into overcrowded shelters hastily erected by state governments, civil society groups and employers. Migrants complain of unhygienic conditions inside the camps and little enforcement of social distancing, triggering fears of the virus spreading rapidly among this vulnerable group. The tragedy is largely the result of inept bureaucracy and lazy policymaking , analysts say, reflected in inadequate data on migrants. “Official statistics … mainly come from the dated census reports that define a migrant as a person who lives somewhere that is not their place of birth or their last place of residence,” Aditi Ratho and Soumya Bhowmick wrote for the Observer Research Foundation. Most migrants lack ration cards or the cards carry domicile restrictions. For migrant labourers no longer in the state where the card was issued, regulations prevent access to subsidies. Ratho and Bhowmick recommend collating up-to-date data on migrants within states to gauge the funds required to provide them with food, housing, sanitation and financial services currently inaccessible for seasonal migrant workers. Unemployment in India is about 6 per cent, with youth unemployment at 10 per cent. Data from the Centre for Monitoring Indian Economy shows a massive jump in weekly unemployment rates following the lockdown. Experts say this could be the result of migrants fleeing cities with no assured source of income as economic activity ground to a halt. India’s economy and many ruined livelihoods won’t heal soon. Neeta Lal is a New Delhi-based editor and journalist. Copyright: YaleGlobal. Reprinted with permission from YaleGlobal Online