ABSTRACT
India began to feel the shiver of the Pandemic in late winter, 2020. On 24 March 2020, Prime Minister Modi declared a 21-day nationwide lockdown, crippling the mobility of the world’s second-largest national population of 1.3 billion, to prevent the spread of the Pandemic in the country. The lockdown period witnessed a severe fall in the standard of living of the working class, a sizeable section of which was constituted by the internal migrants. In certain sectors, government policies before the lockdown increased precarity. The lockdown played havoc when married to such legacy issues. According to a conservative estimate, about 90 migrant workers perished in the searing heat and the sub-human condition in the trains when the central government decided to run special trains to transport the migrants back home. In India, the war against virus took the form of ‘disaster nationalism’, which, as Richard Seymour tells us, is ‘fascinated with the prospect of annihilation’ and ‘giddy for destructive adventure’.
