As unemployment and hunger strike, migrant workers start the return journey

Several companies in the manufacturing, industrial goods and real estate sector have even chartered aircraft to bring back their skilled and semi-skilled employees

Hunger and hopelessness drove tens of thousands of migrant workers from cities of their dreams, vibrant and pulsating with life and activity, to languorous villages in Bihar during the lockdown.

It's hunger and hopelessness again that is pushing them back to the cities in Gujarat, Maharashtra, Karnataka and Telangana, and the sprawling farms of Punjab, disregarding the threat of the coronavirus disease that had brought them to their knees.

Their employers, many of whom had virtually abandoned them, are sending them train and even flight tickets to bring them back as factories whir back to life, construction activity picks up,