COVID, Reverse migration and opportunities to reinvent Gram Swaraj

One of the distressingly overwhelming scenes which followed the sudden announcement of lockdown was mass reverse migration of lakhs of migrant workers from more industrialized and urbanized states and cities to villages in predominantly rural area and resource-constrained states. There is enough evidence in history to suggest that a crisis of such magnitude have the potential to change the way the world, country and society is organized and function. Can the current pandemic do the same for these migrant workers? Among other possibilities, this crisis should warrant a call to revisit and renew focus on ‘Gram Swaraj’, a concept given by the father of the Nation, Mahatma Gandhi, at the centre of which concept is ‘self-reliance’.