Homebound
Amid India's sudden lockdown, millions of migrant workers journeyed home. Their journeys revealed the fragility of urban livelihoods, the resilience of solidarity, and the struggles that continue to shape migration in India.
The national lockdown on March 24, 2020, came without warning, and had few plans for accommodating India’s migrant workers.
Having definitively lost their already precarious jobs, and unable to process the new idioms of distancing, isolation, testing, and sanitation, they yearned to reunite with their families—often hundreds of miles away. National highways turned into thoroughfares for one of the greatest exoduses India has ever witnessed, with an estimated 43.3 million interstate migrants returning home in the ensuing weeks.Milestones in India's COVID-19 Response
Below is a chronological mapping of India’s first wave of COVID-19, tracing the government’s major policy decisions alongside the unfolding health crises and economic impacts.
The timeline highlights how sudden lockdowns, strained healthcare systems, and relief measures intersected, revealing both the immediate impacts and the longer-term consequences for millions of workers and families.
Policy decisions, health crises, and economic interventions and impacts are mapped chronologically.
The Announcement and Its Aftermath
The video below is a compilation of news footage that begins with Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s sudden lockdown announcement on March 24, 2020.
The significant impacts across India’s healthcare system, law enforcement practices, and vulnerable populations is seen in the various clips that follow. They reveal the human cost of implementing emergency public health policies without adequate preparation.
The Art of Medicine
In the research publication “The art of medicine: Has COVID-19 subverted global health,” Professor Vikram Patel and Dr. Richard Cash challenge the one-size-fits-all approach to COVID-19 responses, showing how pandemic policies developed for wealthy nations may not translate effectively to low-resourced countries.
Patel and Cash argue that for the first time in post-war epidemic history, over 96% of COVID-19 deaths occurred in the world’s richest countries, yet these same nations continued to prescribe universal solutions.
The authors emphasize that context matters and social justice must be paramount, critiquing lockdown strategies that may subvert core global health principles when applied to countries with different demographic structures, limited healthcare resources, and fragile economies.
Internal Migration in India
There are an estimated 400 internal migrants in India, among whom women constitute a significant majority, driven by tradition necessitating a bride’s relocation post-marriage.
Beyond the bounds of social customs, economic motivations cast a wide net, drawing individuals and families to cities in the often elusive pursuit of prosperity. With low literacy and few skills to match the demands of the new urban economy, the jobs that await them are largely in the informal sector, lacking contracts, benefits, or social security. Many live in unstable housing, often sleeping in makeshift shelters or on sidewalks.
The unrecognized labor of street vendors, waste-recyclers, headloaders, construction workers, cooks, home-based artisans, dairy workers, and farmers fuels India’s economic growth.
The 2021 Indian Census is yet to be administered.*
A Site of Passage
Memory, Migration, and Mutual Aid
The Teen Darwaza, which translates to “three gates” in Gujarati, was constructed in 1415 CE when the city of Ahmedabad was founded. Over the years, scores of merchants, mendicants, and new regimes passed through these gates, as did returning migrants in 2020.
Despite escalating food insecurity at their homes, SEWA members responded to the plight of returning migrants by crowdsourcing one roti from each of their homes to feed their brethren.
The lockdown altered India’s landscape. Instagram accounts celebrated the transformation of the cities as the skies turned blue and the smog receded. The ephemerality of those moments inspires this collage. It invites the viewer to ask which version of the Teen Darwaza belies its truest form.
