Workers Who Fled Indian Cities Don’t Want to Return

From March through May, around 10 million migrant workers fled India’s megacities, afraid to be unemployed, hungry and far from family during the world’s biggest anti-Covid lockdown.

Now, as Asia’s third-largest economy slowly reopens, the effects of that massive relocation are rippling across the country. Urban industries don’t have enough workers to get back to capacity, and rural states worry that without the flow of remittances from the city, already poor families will be even worse off -- and a bigger strain on state coffers.