The Impact of COVID-19 Lockdown on Migration in India

On 24 March 2020, the Government of India announced a nationwide lockdown with just four hours of notice. Factories, construction sites, offices and shops shut down almost overnight. For most people, this meant staying indoors. But for millions of migrant workers in India’s cities, it meant something far harsher: no work, no wages, and soon, no roof over their heads. What followed was one of the largest mass movements of people the country had seen since Partition, as workers began the long journey back to their villages on foot, on bicycles, and eventually on special trains. This event exposed deep cracks in how India treats the labourers who keep its economy running.

Who are India’s migrant workers?
The lockdown and the sudden loss of livelihood
Why workers chose to leave
Reverse migration: the great exodus
The Shramik Special trains
The human cost of the crisis
A “crisis within a crisis”
How the government responded
Food security and the ration card
Employment for returnees
The deeper lesson: a missing safety net

Who are India’s migrant workers?

Migrant workers are people who leave their home state or district to find work elsewhere, usually in cities. They form the backbone of India’s urban economy. They work on construction sites, in factories, as domestic help, as street vendors, and in countless small workshops. Most of them come from states like Bihar, Uttar Pradesh, Madhya Pradesh, Odisha and Jharkhand, and they travel to destination states such as Maharashtra, Gujarat, Delhi, and Karnataka in search of better wages.

The defining feature of this workforce is that most of them are employed in the informal sector. This means they have no written contracts, no fixed monthly salary, and no job security. They are typically daily-wage earners, paid only for the days they actually work. Research on India’s internal migration confirms that these workers often face wage-related abuse, unpaid overtime, and a near-total absence of social security cover. Because they live hand to mouth, they have little or no savings to fall back on. When work stopped, their entire survival system collapsed within days.

The lockdown and the sudden loss of livelihood

The lockdown was widely seen as necessary to slow the spread of the virus. But the speed and scale of the shutdown left migrant workers with no time to prepare. The moment construction sites and factories closed, the daily wages stopped. With all economic activity suspended indefinitely, workers lost their only source of income.

The problems quickly piled up on top of one another. Without wages, workers could not pay rent, and many were evicted from their rented rooms or labour camps. They could not buy food. Public transport, including buses, trains and flights, was completely suspended. So workers found themselves stranded in expensive cities with no money, no food, no shelter, and no way to get home.

Why workers chose to leave

Faced with this situation, returning to their native villages became the only rational choice. In the village, even without work, there was usually a family home to stay in, relatives to share food with, and a familiar community. The decision to leave was driven by a mix of fear, desperation and the basic need for security. Studies on the exodus note that the movement was not only about meeting basic needs but was also shaped by deep psychosocial distress, including anxiety and a sense of belonging that pulled workers back home.

Reverse migration: the great exodus

Reverse migration is the movement of workers from their place of employment back to their native homes. During the lockdown, this happened on a massive scale. The Union Labour and Employment Ministry later told Parliament that over one crore (10 million) migrant workers returned to their native states after the lockdown, with Uttar Pradesh receiving the highest number.

The early days of the exodus produced some of the most distressing images of the pandemic. With all transport shut, thousands of workers simply started walking, often hundreds of kilometres, in the peak summer heat. Many carried children and elderly relatives. Some travelled on cycles or hitched rides on trucks. The journey was dangerous, and a number of workers died of exhaustion, accidents and hunger along the way.

The Shramik Special trains

After mounting criticism, the government launched Shramik Special trains on 1 May 2020 to carry stranded workers home. These trains became the main official channel for the return journey. According to figures shared in Parliament, 4,621 Shramik Special trains ran between 1 May and 31 August 2020, carrying about 6.3 million passengers to their home states.

However, the trains were not without problems. The arrangement caused controversy when it emerged that workers were initially being charged for tickets, with the cost shared between the Centre and the states on an 85:15 basis. The journeys were also marked by tragedy. The Railways told the Rajya Sabha that 97 people died on board these trains by early September, with post-mortem reports citing causes such as cardiac arrest and pre-existing illness, conditions worsened by the stress and hardship of the period.

The human cost of the crisis

Beyond the headline numbers lies a deeper human story. The lockdown turned millions of workers into a population stripped of income, food and dignity almost simultaneously. Many had to depend on charity, NGO kitchens and government relief just to eat. The uncertainty about when the lockdown would end made the situation worse, because workers could not plan even a few days ahead.

The crisis also exposed a complete lack of data. When questioned in Parliament, the government admitted it did not have figures on how many migrant workers had died during the lockdown. This absence of records reflected a larger truth: India’s informal migrant workforce was largely invisible to official systems, with no central database that tracked who they were, where they worked, or what they were entitled to.

A “crisis within a crisis”

Researchers have described the migrant situation as a “crisis within a crisis”, where the lack of advance planning for workers’ welfare turned a public health emergency into a humanitarian one. The mass return also carried a public health risk of its own. As workers moved from cities to rural areas, there were concerns that the virus would spread to the hinterland, which had far weaker health infrastructure to cope with it.

How the government responded

The scale of the crisis forced a series of policy responses aimed at supporting returning workers. These measures revealed both the government’s intent and the limits of a system that had to be built in the middle of an emergency.

Food security and the ration card

To prevent hunger, the government expanded food support. Under the Pradhan Mantri Garib Kalyan Yojana, beneficiaries received an additional 5 kilograms of free foodgrain per person per month, on top of their regular subsidised quota under the National Food Security Act. The government also pushed the One Nation One Ration Card (ONORC) scheme, which allows a ration cardholder to claim subsidised grain from any part of the country, not just their home district. By December 2020, the Centre told the Supreme Court that 32 States and Union Territories covering around 86% of the National Food Security Act population had been brought under ONORC.

Yet activists pointed out a critical gap. These benefits were tied to holding a ration card, and a large share of the poorest and most mobile workers either did not have one or were left out because the eligibility was based on outdated 2011 population data. The Right to Food Campaign warned that around 30 million unorganised workers risked being excluded for want of ration cards.

Employment for returnees

To provide work for the millions who had gone back to their villages, the government launched the Garib Kalyan Rojgar Abhiyan on 20 June 2020. This was a rural public works scheme with an initial allocation of ₹50,000 crore, designed to provide up to 125 days of employment to returning migrant workers across selected districts. Alongside this, schemes like the Pradhan Mantri SVANidhi for street vendors and support for construction workers were also rolled out.

The deeper lesson: a missing safety net

The migrant crisis was not simply a result of the lockdown. The lockdown only revealed problems that had existed for decades. The core issue is that India’s migrant workers operate in a system that offers them almost no protection. They have no portable social security, no guaranteed minimum income, and no formal recognition in the cities where they spend most of their working lives.

The crisis triggered some long-overdue steps. The Labour Bureau was tasked with conducting an All India Survey on Migrant Workers, and an effort began to build a national database of unorganised workers, the e-Shram portal, so that future relief could actually reach them. The Supreme Court also intervened repeatedly, directing states to provide dry rations and to register unorganised workers so they would not be left out of welfare schemes.

The clearest takeaway is the urgent need for comprehensive support systems that anticipate such shocks rather than react to them. This means better data on who migrant workers are, social security that travels with the worker across state borders, and clear plans for shelter, food and transport during any future emergency. The 2020 exodus made it impossible to ignore the people who build cities yet remain among the least protected in them.

What do you think? Should social security benefits like rations, healthcare and insurance follow a worker wherever they go, rather than being tied to their home state? And whose responsibility should it primarily be to protect migrant workers in a crisis: the state where they work, or the state they come from?

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Table of Contents

Who are India’s migrant workers? 🔗

The lockdown and the sudden loss of livelihood 🔗

Why workers chose to leave 🔗

Reverse migration: the great exodus 🔗

The Shramik Special trains 🔗

The human cost of the crisis 🔗

A “crisis within a crisis” 🔗

How the government responded 🔗

Food security and the ration card 🔗

Employment for returnees 🔗

The deeper lesson: a missing safety net 🔗