Lockdowns, migrants, and the spatial distribution of Covid-19 cases in India

This study analyses the impact of the national level lockdown in India on the migrant workers, and how it changed the spatial distribution of Covid-19 cases. Publicly available district-level data is analysed using spatial statistical methods (choropleth maps, Local Indicators of Spatial Analysis, the Getis-Ord gi* statistic, and multi-scale Geographically Weighted Regression models). On 24th March, 2020, the Prime Minister announced a national lockdown to combat the spread of Covid-19 in India. This resulted in lakhs of migrant workers being stranded in their places of work - exposed to Covid-19, without any work or income. Their long march back to their homes was initially ignored;it was only from May that the Indian Railways started to transport these workers back to their states of origin. This study argues that in the absence of adequate health screening at both source and destination, over-crowded trains, insanitary conditions, and failure to run trains on schedule - the Shramik trains resulted in Covid-19 spreading from hotspots like Maharashtra and Gujarat to create new epicentres in eastern states like West Bengal, Bihar, Orissa, and Assam from where the migrant workers had originated. © 2022 selection and editorial matter, Rajib Bhattacharyya, Ananya Ghosh Dastidar and Soumyen Sikdar;individual chapters, the contributors.