MUMBAI: The maximum city has provided a counter-point to the tragic image of thousands of migrant workers trudging from cities to their villages and towns as the covid-19 forced lockdowns play havoc with jobs, incomes, and livelihoods.
Mumbai, among India's largest settlements of migrant labour, has remained relatively and uncannily quiet when compared with the chaotic scenes unfolding elsewhere in the country.
The reasons for this relative calm are multi-layered and complex. One of the primary, and obvious, reasons is that a sizable portion of the labour in the city is from Maharashtra.
When the state government announced a curfew, before the Janata Curfew or the subsequent 21-day lockdown, many among these workers did some pre-emptive