One year since lockdown, Surat migrant workers say life has only got harder
Work is scarce, buying food is difficult and many still sleep in the open. Migrant workers in the construction sector in Surat. | Aajeevika Bureau
In September, Shamliben , a construction worker from Kushalgarh in South Rajasthan, returned to Surat after having spent nearly six months of the Covid-19 lockdown in her home village in rural Rajasthan.
During the time in which Shamliben had been away, conditions in Surat had become considerably more difficult for her and the city’s thousands of other circular migrants, who spend some months in Surat and the rest of the time in their home villages.