Covid-19: Reducing migrant labour to biological body with no human value

Various incidents from across India suggest that poor migrant workers have been reduced to being just bodies devoid of any humanity

On March 24, Prime Minister Narendra Modi announced a 21-day national lockdown to try and control the spread of the deadly coronavirus (Covid-19) pandemic in the country. The lockdown entailed shutting down of all but essential services, with people not venturing outside their homes. This also meant the shutting down of all economic activity in the country, including manufacturing or building activity. What the country saw after this announcement was nothing short of a crisis, however. Instead of leading to a complete shutting down of movement across the country, it led to hundreds of thousands of migrant workers deciding to