New virus wave sparks fresh worker exodus from India's cities

New Delhi

INDIA'S surging epidemic has forced both its financial and political capitals into lockdown, spurring a fresh exodus of migrant labourers fleeing the cities fearing vanishing jobs as panic rises over the ferocity of the country's second Covid-19 wave.

The nation now has the world's fastest-growing Covid-19 caseload, adding 259,170 new infections and 1,761 deaths on Tuesday, leaving it behind only the US in terms of total numbers. As virus numbers have soared, more state governments have announced localised shutdowns to try and tamp down on the surge.

On April 19, national capital New Delhi announced a six-day curfew after it reported more than 24,000 daily infections.

The city is out of hospital beds, medical oxygen and drugs being used to treat the most critically ill patients. Hours after the announcement, reports began emerging of thousands of the city's poorest workers converging at the main interstate bus terminals.

At Anand Vihar bus terminal in New Delhi, Sandeep Rai, a 30-year-old driver, was one of the thousands trying to leave the city on Tuesday. He was trying to make his way home to his village in the neighboring state of Uttar Pradesh.

"I have just 100 rupees (S$1.76) left with me, and I don't know how long this lockdown is going to last," Mr Rai said. "The landlord wants rent, there are power bills to be paid, where is the money? It is true the government did ask us stay back, but can you trust the government? I can't."

The images were reminiscent of India's first strict lockdown in late March last year where hundreds of thousands of workers fled cities as their daily wages dried up with just a few hours of notice. Many of these people have only just returned to the cities as the economy slowly began to pick up, only to be crushed again by this second wave.

The exodus from the cities comprises migrants from villages and small towns who keep urban India moving while making less than US$2 a day - construction workers, handymen, food sellers, truck drivers and household help.

Maharashtra, India's wealthiest and most industrialised state, has seen migrant labourers leave the city since authorities issued work-from-home orders early this month. This despite the government saying it will spend 54 billion rupees to support its vulnerable citizens.

Mumbai alone has more than 8 million migrants from other areas of the country, according to the 2011 census, most of whom work in the informal sector as rickshaw drivers or food cart vendors and an enforced lockdown risks robbing them of weeks of pay.

As more cities and states have issued stay-at-home order or other movement restrictions job losses in India have begun to tick up. Urban unemployment jumped to 10.72 per cent for the week ending April 18 from 7.21 per cent two weeks ago, according to data from the Centre for Monitoring Indian Economy Pvt Ltd.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi, under fire for continuing to hold mass election rallies while the country's hospitals were sounding the alarm over severe shortages of beds and oxygen, met with government officials on April 19 to discuss the growing health crisis. BLOOMBERG