Hundreds of thousands of migrant laborers have begun long journeys on foot to get home, having been rendered homeless and jobless by the lockdown measures. More than a dozen have died in the process.

With businesses shut down, many of the millions of migrants who had moved to cities to find work, and often lived in their workplaces, were trying to return home. They planned, in some cases, to walk hundreds of miles — until they were beaten back by the police. There are no clear plans by the government to bring migrants home.

And the country’s homeless population — one of the largest in the world — is deeply struggling, with many people not knowing about the coronavirus until they are ordered off the streets by the police; some said they had been beaten by officers for being out in public during the nationwide lockdown.

Shelters and soup kitchens are overwhelmed; religious institutions that normally feed the homeless are closed; and aid workers warn that the situation may deteriorate into violence if people continue to go without food.

Quotable: “You fear the disease, living on the streets — but I fear hunger more, not corona,” said one migrant working in Delhi who was trying to return home, which was 125 miles away.