India's Response to the COVID-19 Pandemic: A Frontal Assault on the "Historically Dispossessed"

During the nationwide lockdown as part of the state response to the COVID-19 pandemic, the predicament of interstate migrant laborers in India, caught in crowded cities without means of livelihood and basic resources needed to sustain life, gained national and international attention. This article explores the context of the current migrant crisis through the historical trajectories and political roots of internal migration in India and its relationship with the urban informal labor market and the structural determinants of precarious employment. We argue that the both the response to the pandemic and the disproportionate impact on migrant laborers are reflections and consequences of an established pattern of neglect and poor accountability of the state toward the employment and living conditions of migrant workers who toil precariously in the informal labor market.