Mumbai/ Bengaluru/ Hyderabad/ Ernakulam/ New Delhi: Thousands of migrant workers marched in an unceasing stream, heavy bags on their heads, children and elderly in tow, to the Anand Vihar terminal in east Delhi, looking to escape not the coronavirus pandemic but starvation itself, with the country placed under a 21-day lockdown.
The jobs had vanished overnight. With no income, scarcity of essential commodities and no savings to pay rent, many have risked walking back to their villages, hundreds of miles into the hinterland.
Not all survived. As the tragedy unfolded, the Delhi government arranged buses to ferry them to their villages, but with the city under lockdown, workers still had to walk from as far away as Gurugram to reach the bus