On March 24, amidst the Corona crisis, India suddenly found itself facing an internal migrant crisis also. As the government announced a nationwide lockdown, lakhs of daily-wage migrant workers found themselves jobless, left without a source of income and unprepared. Many not knowing how to survive without work and with public transport suspended, decided to walk back home. A few hundred, even over a thousand, kilometers. They walked. Some alone, some with their children on their backs, some with pregnant wives, and some with their entire lives in a rucksack. Many never made it.

These are the people that help run the metropolises. They are the backbone of the economy. And yet, the metropolises turned their backs on them.

It’s a story of desperation. Of resolve. And of community. There have been relief efforts, there has been a help, and there have been happy endings. But not nearly enough. Of all the things that the pandemic rocked, the people who built our country were hit the hardest.