PROVED WRONG

At the bus stand in Uttar Pradesh’s Deoria, 50 km from the railway junction in Gorakhpur, Diwakar Prasad and Khursheed Ansari are both boarding buses. Mr Ansari is a factory worker in Mumbai. His tailoring unit is still shut and he returned home just a month ago. He said if there were employment in UP, he would not return. His company has not reopened but he will find what work he can, because coronavirus is better than hunger. The conjecture that guest workers will no longer return to cities was thus little more than a shortsighted middle class guilt trip fantasy.

N. Qasmi Mumbai