‘Lockdown will make us beg for food again’ say India Covid-19 migrants

The Sethi brothers repeatedly asked me this question over a grainy video call last week from a grotty little room in the western Indian city of Mumbai with their voices trembling in nervousness.

More than a decade ago, Santosh and Tunna Sethi left their families and homes in the eastern state of Orissa, also called Odisha, in search of work. They arrived in Mumbai, more than 1,600km (994 miles) away.

Here, the brothers toiled in the shadows of the city’s imposing skyscrapers that migrant workers build for the affluent. Ferrying cement, sand, bricks, and stones, they earned 450 rupees ($6; £4.35) every day for eight hours of work. They lived, ate, and slept in unfinished buildings, and sent most of their savings home to support their families.

Of India’s more than 450 million migrants, 60 million are inter-state “labor” migrants, according to Chinmay Tumbe, the author of India Moving: A History of Migration. These workers are the backbone of the booming informal economies of India’s cities. Despite contributing 10% to India’s GDP, they are “socially and politically vulnerable”, says Prof Tumbe.

With more than three million reported Covid-19 infections, the state of Maharashtra, which has Mumbai as its capital, is the stubborn epicenter of India’s second wave of infections. The government has been warning of a full lockdown unless cases begin to fall.

On Tuesday it imposed stringent new restrictions to curb the virus spread, with only essential travel and services allowed until the end of April. Also, construction activity will be allowed where workers – like the Sethis – live on the site.

India’s sweeping and badly-planned lockdown last year had forced more than 10 million migrant workers to flee the big cities they worked in.