As India prepares for a post-lockdown recovery with an avowed aim of turning atma-nirbhar, policymakers would do well to recognize that offering our workforce due security is a precondition to achieving it Newspapers have been filled with the sad plight of migrant labour moving around in panic, meeting with accidents and treated as if they were a commodity, not human capital.
For instance, the Uttar Pradesh government stated in an advertisement that 1.1 million migrants had returned, and that the state was ready to take in and provide for many more.
Other states followed suit. Tall promises to returnees seem to paper over the fact that a lack of opportunities at home was why they went so far in the first place; that is, to earn a living as