The harrowing scenes of migrant workers, hungry and frustrated, walking on the highways with their family and meagre belongings have deeply disturbed us all. The lock-down has revealed the social fault lines in our country, which have remained hidden from the public eye. For far too long, the migrant workers were treated as cogs in the wheel of construction, taken for granted, hired and fired at will as they are in the so-called unorganised, informal sector. In most cases, they were really bonded labour at the mercy of ruthless contractors who duped them into serfdom.
Covid-19 has shown the other virus in our country: social inequality, seen in the heartrending walk of migrant workers towards their homes. Their mitigation would only partly depend on the success of schemes like the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (MGNREGA), for which massive funds have been allotted. The liberalised use of satellite-derived data would also....
