The coronavirus pandemic has left many of the world’s poor without money for food or rent after they were rendered jobless by economic shutdowns – often with very little support from their governments.
Nowhere has the scale of the tragedy been as evident as in India, where hundreds of millions of the rural poor migrate to big cities to earn a living. With all modes of transport shut amid the weeks-long lockdown, many simply began walking to their home villages, hundreds of kilometres away.
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Pushpa Kumari, 25, pacifies her son along a highway near Ghaziabad city. Taniya Dutta/The National -
Krishna Shah, 27, has set off on a 1,000-kilometre-long foot journey with 11 friends to his village in eastern state of Bihar. Taniya Dutta/The National -
Migrant workers rest on National Highway 24, near Ghaziabad city on the outskirts of New Delhi, Taniya Dutta/The National -
Migrant workers rest on National Highway 24 near Ghaziabad city. Taniya Dutta/The National -
Thousands of men, women and children are walking hundreds of miles in an attempt to go back to their homes. Taniya Dutta/The National -
Sudarshan Chauhan, 55, taking a break with his granddaughter on National Highway 24. Taniya Dutta/The National -
Thousands of men, women and children are walking hundreds of miles in an attempt to go back to their homes. Taniya Dutta/The National -
Migrant workers rest on National Highway 24, near Ghaziabad city. Taniya Dutta/The National
On this week's edition of Beyond the Headlines, host Suhail Akram discusses their plight with Taniya Dutta, correspondent for The National in New Delhi, and Shankar Gopalakrishnan, an Indian activist and researcher. We also hear from Rajiv G, assistant editor with The Times of India, about the "Kerala Model" for containing the virus, and Samaan Lateef, a journalist from Kashmir who tells us how people in that region have been affected by the pandemic.
