Politics over pain: Migrants' long walk home and the Centre-state tussles

The Centre and state governments bonded and then fell apart during the longest lockdown walk

Tired of walking miles after the lockdown was announced on March 24, hundreds of migrants had gathered at the Delhi-Uttar Pradesh border on Friday in the hope of getting back home by bus once the word had spread that the administration was arranging transport for them. Officials in the Prime Minister’s Office (PMO) were still undecided on whether to give a green signal to a proposal to screen and transport workers to their domicile states while visuals of the migrants’ long walk made international news.

The governments in Uttar Pradesh and Uttarakhand had started making arrangements to transport migrants from