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Opinion
Andy Mukherjee

Homes Can Shelter India’s China Dream After Covid

If India wants to be factory floor to the world, the workers need walls and a roof.

Putting a roof over their heads is not an impossible dream.

Putting a roof over their heads is not an impossible dream.

Photographer: Yogendra Kumar/Hindustan Times/Getty

India quite literally needs to put a roof over its China dream.

It took a pandemic and a lockdown to highlight the precarious existence of the country’s blue-collar workers. Left without jobs and shelter, an estimated 30 million — roughly a fifth of the urban labor force — have gone back to their villages, with many completing long, hazardous journeys on foot when trains and buses shut down.