Episode 35- One Year Since the Long Walk Home: Banda’s migrant workers on their year after lockdown

One year ago Aravind Yadav took a very long walk. From Lucknow which had turned inwards into a city meant only for its inhabitants — to Kamasin in Banda, Uttar Pradesh. A little distance away from his village, he was met with a ramshackle college building in a jungle that would keep him captive for the next few weeks.  Aravind was held in DGIS intercollege — one of the 2,230  quarantine centers U.P. created for migrant workers coming home from mazdoori (daily waged-labour) in businesses classified as “non-essential”. These were businesses like construction, painting, tile-work, spice-making– businesses on which India’s cities are quite literally built. These were businesses that shut shop after the Prime Minister’s surprise-address to his subjects. The