Rush Of Migrants At Inter-State Bus Station In Delhi

When Prime Minister Narendra Modi announced a sudden and complete lockdown last March to control the pandemic, it had triggered an exodus of the desperate. Visuals of working-class migrant labourers pouring out of cities and walking hundreds of kilometres to reach their villages became the defining image of the pandemic in India. This year, as a gigantic second wave courses through the country, a few things are visibly different: there is no blanket nation-wide lockdown, inter-state transport is still running and migrant workers are not trudging home on foot.