Economics
‘We Will Starve Here’: India’s Poor Flee Cities in Mass Exodus
- Tired, hungry day-wage laborers march to villages on foot
- Migration risks spreading virus across India during lockdown
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In small groups and large crowds, through inner-city lanes and down interstate highways, hundreds of thousands of India’s poorest are slowly making a desperate journey on foot back to their villages in a mass exodus unseen since the days immediately after India’s independence in 1947.
For many, it’s a matter of life and death. Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s order last Tuesday to lock down the country for 21 days to prevent the spread of Covid-19 has dried up work in urban areas, leaving many rural migrants who keep the city moving while making less than $2 a day -- construction workers, handymen, food sellers, truck drivers and household help -- suddenly wondering how they’ll pay rent or buy food.