DISPLACED, DISTRESSED

The lockdown hit some 200 million migrant workers the hardest, pushing them into unemployment and a long journey back home

- AMARNATH K. MENON

Munna, 38, from Bihar’s Madhepura district, has set out again for Bengaluru, where he worked as a carpenter before the Covid lockdown forced a return home. Nirala Kumar, 37, of Danapur in Patna, is back in Jamnagar, Gujarat, with his wife and three children, hoping to draw the pre-lockdown wages he earned there as an assistant at a brass melting furnace. These enterprising souls are among the estimated 200 million migrant workers whose lives and livelihoods were turned upside down by Covid-19. With the country’s economy still in the throes of the pandemic, countless others like Munna and Kumar are anxiously waiting to find reemployment in the cities and metros they had fled—perhaps a call from a labour contractor or former employer—while others have made the equally difficult decision to stay and look for work closer home.

MADHURESH KUMAR SINGH, 35 Auto-rickshaw driver, Mumbai

“My income has dipped. I wonder when things will get back to normal”

Madhuresh Kumar Singh wants to erase the painful memories of the Covid lockdown and look forward to better days in 2021. Singh, 35, landed in Mumbai in 2012 from Jaunpur, Uttar Pradesh, to make a living and take care of his wife, two sons and four brothers back home. He stayed in a tiny room, along with two other auto-rickshaw drivers, in Juhu and earned around Rs 30,000 a month. Singh says he could comfortably pay his auto-rickshaw loan instalment of Rs 5,000 a month, the room rent of Rs 2,000 and meet other expenses. Every month, he would send a big chunk of his earnings to his family. “Life was going smooth, though I had higher aspirations,” he says.