India’s poor flee cities in mass exodus

From the article:

In small groups and large crowds, through inner-city lanes and down interstate highways, hundreds of thousands of India’s poorest are slowly making a desperate journey on foot back to their villages in a mass exodus unseen since the days immediately after India’s independence in 1947.

For many, it’s a matter of life and death. Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s order last Tuesday to lock down the country for 21 days to prevent the spread of Covid-19 has dried up work in urban areas, leaving many rural migrants who keep the city moving while making less than $2 a day -- construction workers, handymen, food sellers, truck drivers and household help -- suddenly wondering how they’ll pay rent or buy food.

“We have to go to our village -- we will starve here,” said Rekha Devi as she walked with her husband and two young children down a highway outside of Delhi, heading to see her family some 370 kilometers (270 miles) away. The couple lived on the construction site where they worked, but the job stopped suddenly more than a week ago.

[...]

What’s worse, the mass movement of people risks speeding the spread of the coronavirus across the country -- undermining the goal of the 21-day lockdown. Right now, it’s nearly impossible to tell what will happen because India lacks testing data to determine what stage the pandemic has reached, according to Gagandeep Kang, an infectious disease expert and head of India’s Translational Health Science and Technology Institute outside of Delhi.