Adhikari, Anindita and Goregaonkar, Navmee and Narayanan, Rajendran and Panicker, Nishant and Ramamoorthy, Nithya
(2020)
Manufactured maladies : lives and livelihoods of migrant
workers during COVID‑19 lockdown in India.
The Indian Journal of Labour Economics.
pp. 1-29.
ISSN 0971-7927
Abstract
The 68 days of lockdown in India, as a measure to contain the spread of the COVID19 pandemic, resulted in an unprecedented humanitarian crisis, unlike any other in
the world. In the frst half of the lockdown, migrant workers were stranded with no
food and money with severe restrictions on movement when a mass exodus of workers back to their hometowns and villages began. In the second half, the workers’
woes were compounded with a series of chaotic travel orders and gross mismanagement of the repatriation process. In this article, we draw on the work of Stranded
Workers Action Network (SWAN) with more analysis and perspective. SWAN was
a spontaneous relief efort that emerged soon after the lockdown was announced in
March 2020. In addition to providing relief, SWAN concurrently documented the
experiences of over 36,000 workers through the lockdown. We highlight the inadequacy of the government and judicial response to the migrant worker crisis. We present quantitative data elaborating the profle of workers that reached out to SWAN,
the extent of hunger, loss of livelihoods and income. We also present qualitative
insights based on interactions with workers and discuss multiple, non-exhaustive,
dimensions of vulnerability to which migrant workers were exposed.
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