Social Policy, COVID-19 and Impoverished Migrants: Challenges and Prospects in Locked Down India

Sohini Sengupta,Manish K Jha

doi:10.1177/2516602620933715

Abstract

As countries shore up existing safeguards to address the social and economic impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic, India faces a humanitarian disaster of unprecedented proportions. Ninety per cent of the Indian workforce is employed in the unorganised sector; uncounted millions work in urban areas at great distances from rural homes. When the Government of India (GOI) announced the sudden ‘lockdown’ in March to contain the spread of the pandemic, migrant informal workers were mired in a survival crisis, through income loss, hunger, destitution and persecution from authorities policing containment and fearful communities maintaining ‘social distance’. In this context, the article analyses how poverty, informality and inequality are accentuated by the COVID-19 pandemic experiences of ‘locked down’ migrant workers. The article examines the nature and scope of existing social policy, designed under changing political regimes and a fluctuating economic climate, to protect this vulnerable group and mitigate dislocation, discrimination and destitution at this moment and in future.

Highlights

As millions of migrant workers in India began their long trek home, carrying children, clutching their meagre possessions, crowding disrupted transport networks, beaten and resourceless, after the sudden lockdown in the wake of the novel coronavirus pandemic, they faced hunger, destitution, the wrath of the police and suspicion of communities and tragic death (Ghosh, 2020; Jadhav, 2020; Jha & Pankaj, 2020)
We look at the situation of informal workers, especially migrants, their vulnerabilities following the 60-day lockdown measure and the path it shows for the need for social protection in the short and longer term
We look at all possible social safety nets being mooted by the government, activists, civil society groups, planners and academics that can be put in place to protect displaced informal workers and stem the exponential growth of poverty and inequality

Summary

Introduction

As millions of migrant workers in India began their long trek home, carrying children, clutching their meagre possessions, crowding disrupted transport networks, beaten and resourceless, after the sudden lockdown in the wake of the novel coronavirus pandemic, they faced hunger, destitution, the wrath of the police and suspicion of communities and tragic death (Ghosh, 2020; Jadhav, 2020; Jha & Pankaj, 2020). The article finds that the debates about entrenched poverty among India’s rural and urban informal workers, and redistributive concerns around this, had moved to the edge of social policy debates in recent years shaped by economic growth optimism, change in political regime, delayed data and fragmented, scheme-based interventions.

Results

Conclusion