Savings dry up, few jobs: Covid second wave hits migrant workers harder

Workforce is facing grim reality of hunger as many people do not carry ration cards with them.

Sudhir Paswan, 29, is back to square one--in his village in Bihar's Muzaffarpur district, counting his losses. It has been more than a week since he returned, after failing to secure a job in Delhi. A labourer who loaded and unloaded goods in Delhi's Okhla Industrial Area, he would earn between Rs 200 and Rs 700 a day. "Since the lockdown, there was no work and access to food and essentials became difficult. I had to leave the city," he said. Over 800,000 migrants left India's capital, for instance, for their hometowns in 2021. Paswan is just one of them.