For many of us, the novel coronavirus seems a surreal monster that lives somewhere out there, away from us, invisible. The economic repercussions — job loss, salary cuts, irregular gigs — are more personal, immediate and scary.
The spectre of joblessness comes a-visiting once every decade to our drawing rooms; for the migrant worker, however, it’s the norm. Add SARS-CoV-2 to the unhealthy mix, and it’s potentially fatal.
The current crisis is forcing millions of India’s workers to make the primordial journey, but back from to the Promised Land; in some cases only to die enroute or at destination, with no messiah to part the Red Sea for them. Might seem dramatic, but not far from reality for the poor and internally displaced.
Internal displacements because of disasters like cyclones and floods are alarmingly common in India: More than 5 million new such displacements in 2019 — the most in the world — according to the Internal Displacement Monitoring Centre (IDMC)...
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