In India, the Prime Minister’s response of initiating a lockdown to control the spread of COVID – 19 has resulted in a mass migration of workers. A migration of this scale has been unobserved from the time of the partition. Most transportation systems like the Indian Railways aren’t operational anymore, resulting in workers walking (in some cases more than 600 kilometers) to travel back home. Multiple people have been reported dead from starvation or exhaustion. In India, according to the 2012 National Sample Survey report, of those employed, 62% are casual labour and 50% are self employed and are unprotected. There has been little or no measures that have been taken to help provide food / shelter / income to people who are now out of a livelihood because of unemployment.
Measures have to be system specific, and need to account for all the socioeconomic and cultural variables that shift from region to region.