Fighting coronavirus: The other frontline workers of the pandemic

Across India, grassroots workers engaged in developmental work have taken on the role of keeping rural communities safe

For the last few weeks, Manisha Ghule and her team of 30-odd women have been sleeping for barely three to four hours a day.

The sugarcane cutters, who head to Karnataka and western Maharashtra every year in search of work, have returned to their villages in Beed, the drought-prone district of Maharashtra’s Marathwada region where Ghule works. As the lockdown was announced in response to the Covid-19 pandemic, the vulnerable seasonal migrants rushed home. The state borders were getting sealed, but they somehow managed to make the journey back to an uncertain future — and to antagonistic villagers who