**9. Harder hit migrant workers**

Throughout the Coronavirus pandemic, domestic migrant workers have been experiencing numerous adversities and destitution. With industries and factories closed down as a result of the nationwide lockdown, millions of migrant workers were left with loss of livelihood, food shortages, ambiguity about their future and unfortunate eventualities. The story of Mrs. SY, below, highlights the agony that some migrant workers and their families have faced during this time.

#### **Ordeal and Tragic Departure of a Migrant Family**

With excessive numbers of migrant workers without work and little hope once the lockdown began March 24, 2020, many began the journey back to their villages by foot, cycling, hitchhiking, etc. Mrs. SY and her family were living and working in Mumbai with their food cart. When their savings depleted in the first two months of the lockdown, they tried to book the special train tickets to return to their village some 1,500 km away. Their tickets never came so they left by Auto-rickshaw. Driving 11 hours/day and sleeping on the pavements, Mrs. SY, her husband and two children were eager for the safety of their village. However, on the fourth day of their journey home and just 200 km away, their Auto-rickshaw was struck by a truck and killed both Mrs. SY and one of her daughters [80].

Migrant workers comprise a significant sector of the population, and as such they have become particularly at-risk during the Coronavirus pandemic [77, 81, 82]. Presently, there is significant discrepancy among estimates of the migrant worker count in India. Estimates of the informal economic sector range from 70 to 400 million workers [83–85]. Further, the World Bank reports 471,689,092 workers in India's labour force [86]. The informal economy, therefore, comprises roughly anywhere between 14.8 and 76.2% of the workforce in India.

Regardless of the actual number of migrant labourers, the unique challenges and adverse psychosocial effects of the pandemic on the informal sector can be disproportionately significant and even fatal. With the initial lockdown, workers abruptly lost income and/or were subject to working conditions with suspended occupational safety precautions [81]. In addition to their susceptibility to communicable diseases due to migrant workers' factors relating to their socioeconomic status (e.g., malnutrition, substandard and crowded living and sanitation conditions, and pre-existing health issues related to their conditions), they also have had to contend with the absence of family support and economic constraints, as well as the burden of failing to provide financial support to their loved ones [81, 87].

Migrant workers' opportunities to meet their basic needs of food and shelter, coupled with the abrupt loss of income and concern with contracting the infection and developing anxiety, all converged in large-scale movements from the cities to return to home communities. However, such movements, supported by special train transportation, led to an increase in the spread of the infection, including migrant passengers losing their lives later to COVID-19 [87, 88]. The lack of available transportation during the lockdown has also led to "significant deaths of migrant workers in road accidents" ([77], p. 207). Further, even once migrant workers return home, they may further compromise their family's food and shelter access while employment opportunities back home are scarce. Moreover, social exclusion and the stigma of possibly transmitting the infection from the cities to

#### *Psychosocial Effects and Public Health Challenges of COVID-19 Pandemic in India DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.5772/intechopen.99093*

their communities upon their return has also further alienated the worker and their family from their community. For those migrants who remained in their host cities, unsanitary, crowded living conditions and the inability to therefore adhere to social distancing guidelines only further jeopardized the remaining migrant workers' health [87]. Furthermore, accessing health care, particularly during the pandemic, has proven to be another obstacle for migrant workers. The dearth of trained health professionals to address communicable and noncommunicable diseases was already an issue for India's public health infrastructure prior to the onset of the pandemic.
