ABSTRACT
The national lockdown to contain COVID-19, announced by the central government with four hours' notice on the evening of March 24, 2020, triggered massive reverse migration, with millions of migrants trying to return to their home states, and intra-state migrants also trying to return to their home districts, triggering concerns of contagion spreading to rural areas through these returning migrants. After returning to the farm in Peddapalem, the group of men, women, and children sat with their belongings for two days under the open sky without food or water. Several thousand seasonal migrants, about half of them women and children, may be stranded in Guntur, farmers' rights activists suggest. Lack of credible information about the pandemic and lockdown has worsened the trauma of the seasonal workers living and working in relative isolation on the chilli farms.
