India's circular migrant workers constitute a large part of the $ 2.8 trillion economy's workforce. In The New Indian Express, Shankkar Aiyar relates the lack of coordination and quick decision making that left them stranded on their way back home during the lockdown.
Excerpts below:
" The estimated size of mobile migrant worker population is over 100 million – that is roughly the combined workforce of Germany, the United Kingdom and Canada.
Since the lockdown of March 24, a majority of these workers, facing an uncertain future, unattended to by sectoral employers and the state, marched on foot to the call of their fears, or have been left stranded across urban metros in the industrialised and urbanised states."
"The indisputable need for a plan to transport workers continues to be disputed. Confounding the confusion is generation of voodoo theories — immune to Karl Popper’s principle of falsifiability, very simply arm waving studded with bazaar logic, which could not be proved nor disproved."
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