Modi Can’t Send Workers on a Long March Home Again

Those who labor hardest to build India are also the first to suffer in a crisis. When the first Covid lockdown was imposed in March 2020, images of migrant workers walking along deserted highways from cities back to their rural homes stunned and disturbed the country. They had to, because without the opportunity to earn a daily wage they were hungry and destitute — and, unlike in their native villages where families could help, there was no social safety net in large towns on which they could rely in an emergency.

The same thing, though on a thankfully smaller scale, is happening again. As the blockade of the Strait of Hormuz finally begins to bite, the price of fuel — and particularly liquid petroleum gas, or LPG, which is commonly used in the subcontinent for cooking — is increasing. For those lucky enough to have a formal address, the cost of a 14.2-kilogram cylinder has only increased by about 7%, to 913 rupees ($9.50) — though they still have to worry about a long wait for replacement.