Till now, the biggest dark spot in India’s lockdown to prevent Covid-19 from spreading has been its lack of planning about migrant workers. While countries such as Bangladesh and Sri Lanka ensured that most of their migrants were able to head back to their villages before cities were sealed off, India planned to keep the workers in place in the cities. This has caused incredible misery for the migrants, some of whom were forced to walk hundreds of kilometres to get back home since the daily-wage jobs on which they depended for survival had disappeared. For those who were stranded in cities, the distress has in recent days begun to spill into the street: in Gujarat, their frustrations even escalated into mob violence.

Host vs homes: On migrants, a lockdown divide between rich and poor states