NEW DELHI: Indian authorities struggled on Monday to help millions left jobless by a crippling coronavirus lockdown, potentially undermining efforts to stop the virus ravaging the world’s second most-populous nation.

Since the lockdown began on Wednesday, hundreds of thousands of labourers have been heading back from cities where they worked to their home villages, some walking hundreds of miles and with little money or food.

The exodus has raised worries that those returning may spread coronavirus into rural areas, particularly with authorities resorting to cramming people onto buses and into relief camps and homeless shelters.

At the weekend in Delhi, migrant workers and their families fought and shoved their way onto buses organised by India’s most populous state, Uttar Pradesh.

“I couldn’t afford the room we had so there was no choice, we had to leave,” said Ranjit Kumar, who walked with his wife and two-year-old son for two days to get from Haryana state to the bus terminal.

Around 90,000 people were transported in buses on Sunday from Ghaziabad outside Delhi, the Times of India reported.

Late on Sunday the federal government ordered all district and state borders closed in a bid to stop the exodus, and directed local authorities to organise temporary shelters.

On Monday the crowds had disappeared on the outskirts of Delhi. The city government said it was now feeding 400,000 people, with more than 550 schools providing shelter.

The central state of Maharashtra, home to Mumbai, and another big magnet for migrant labourers, has set up 262 relief camps and was providing shelter to 70,399 people, the chief minister tweeted.

Authorities ordered a racetrack outside Delhi that hosted a Formula One race in 2011 be used to house 5,000 migrant workers, the Times of India reported.

Uttar Pradesh has announced aid and set up 600 shelter homes that will act as quarantine centres, local official Alok Kumar said. He was unable to say how many people were still on the road.

Former national health secretary Sujatha Rao said it was not known if the virus had spread from the urban travelling middle class to rural migrants, but if it had, such large congregations of people would be a worry.

“If any one of them has indeed got the infection, it certainly can spread very rapidly as the poor in urban metros live in very crowded accommodation. Social distancing is not an option for them,” Rao said.

Late on Sunday several hundred labourers clashed with police in Surat, in Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s home state of Gujarat, after they were prevented from leaving, authorities said.

Published in Dawn, March 31st, 2020