Rural India was already in deep crisis. The post-reform period was marked by a process of uneven economic growth. Rural India was changing but in an uneven manner. The gap between
rural and urban India was widening. Agriculture was undergoing a significant transition. The post-reform period has been marked by an increased informalisation of employment in India.

The Covid-19 pandemic has taken the country off-guard and starkly exposed the existence and plight of a vast number of migrants who had been surviving in the interstices of a highly
segmented urban informal sector. Extensive media coverage has to a good extent undone the invisibilisation of the magnitude of migrant labour force in India. From the point of view of
economic migration, the pandemic has struck not just as a health emergency but more so as the unveiling of a chronic rural crisis that is extremely ill-prepared to handle the reverse exodus of thousands who have returned to the villages. The pandemic was unanticipated. But it revealed the vast inequalities that characterise the Indian economy and society.
The nation-wide lockdown imposed on 24 March 2020 within a short notice meant an abrupt loss of livelihoods for a vast majority of informal workers.

Unable to survive the drastic reductions in their earnings, savings and consumption, many migrants started to move to their home states and districts amidst the lockdown. Because of the lockdown the transport and communication had completely been closed. Finding no other alternatives, they started walking back to their homes. This created a humanitarian crisis, not seen since the days of partition of India.As migrants have started returning to their villages, rural India is facing a severe and unprecedented crisis.

This report is a modest effort by a group of young researchers to document the conditions of migrant workers and others during the pandemic in villages they were familiar with. In many cases, the researchers studied their own villages, where they were staying after the educational institutions were closed down. Apart from the migrants, the researchers also interviewed
farmers, agricultural labourers and service holders in the villages to know about the ways through which Covid 19 has impacted their livelihoods. They made an attempt to triangulate the information collected through these interviews but we were not always successful.