The pandemic has brought misery and suffering to millions around the world, much of which has nothing to do with the disease and everything to do with the social aftermath of the pandemic.

Risk of hunger, the uncertainty of future employment, and poverty-related suicide are imminent threats for many Indians. It seems that post-pandemic India has brought massive pain and suffering among people living in extreme poverty, particularly disadvantaged caste and religious groups, transgender people, women, and rural residents.

Migrant workers in India disproportionately hail from historically marginalized and socioeconomically disadvantaged groups, such as Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes. Migrant workers move in numbers from rural areas to metropolises, eking a living out of daily wages. The extreme suffering of the underprivileged groups proves that people who have been assigned low caste status; living in dreadful poverty; self-identify as transgender or women, and permanently live in rural areas bear the utmost brunt of COVID-19 exposure and effect.

With a population of over 1.3 billion people, a significant proportion of India’s population is either working poor or living in poverty. The data released by the Multidimensional Poverty Index (MPI) (a project of the United Nations Development Program) indicate that 46.7% of those employed earn below $3.20 a day and 27.9% are living in poverty. Marginalized groups, such as Dalits, Adivasis, Muslims and transgender people fare worst in terms of socioeconomic status.

Migrant workers are mostly employed as wage laborers in industries like construction, housekeeping, cleaning, and laundry. Likely to comprise a large proportion of daily wage migrant workers, Dalits (or the untouchables) escape economic and cultural oppression in rural areas. However, with reverse migration, their conditions are worse than deplorable due to non-acceptance in the villages.

Caritas India conducted a rapid research on the distress of returnee migrant workers to understand their struggles, agonies and uncertainties after returning to their native places. The findings of the research have helped in shaping the interventions for ameliorating the sufferings of migrants.

The response has been planned through the partners to facilitate the livelihood restoration of the migrant families, landless farmers, women/disabled based on their skills, agriculture and allied sector activities.

Caritas India shall reach out to 13550 families by making provisions for setting up income generation unit for immediate income, agricultural inputs to the landless farmers, seed support, livestock support, provision of fallow land/land on lease for landless farmers and setting up nutritional kitchen gardens.

Simultaneous strategies through the engagement of existing community institutions will be on awareness generation on reintegration of returnee households into the village functioning, linking returnee migrants to MNREGA through provision of job card, linking returnee migrants to PDS and linking returnee to the government provision of remuneration for migrant households.