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

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.