Impact of COVID-19 on Migrant Labourers of India and China

Rajiv Ranjan

Critical Sociology, First Published November 29, 2020

https://doi.org/10.1177/0896920520975074

Abstract

The COVID-19 crisis has posed unprecedented economic challenges for governments across the world with certain sectors becoming more and more vulnerable to this pandemic. The plight of migrant labours in India during lockdown has shown fault lines not only in the economy but in the society too. The pandemic has worsened the condition of migrants both in India and China as it has put the severe challenges to poverty eradication programmes and increasing the income of farmers. Nevertheless, migrants labourers in both countries have different characteristics, Chinese migrants are farmers as the Chinese word for them 农民工 ‘nongmin gong’ signifies, whereas migrants labourers in India can be either small landholding farmers or landless labourers. This paper compares the plight of migrant labourers of both India and China in the current pandemic situation to contextualises the causes of this misery in the broader framework of land reform and capability to absorb them in rural economy in both countries.