One of the biggest challenges faced by administrative and healthcare authorities in tackling the rapidly-spreading coronavirus was the issue of the migrant population. And images of 18 people stuffed in a cement mixer became a symbol of the migrants’ desperation.

The announcement of a lockdown on March 25 caught this section of the population completely off guard. With limited means and miniscule savings, they had no option but to somehow reach their villages where, as a migrant worker put it, ‘people take care of each other unlike cities’.

People walked, cycled, hitched rides in trucks carrying essential services and hopped onto anything that could take them closer home, including a concrete mixer.

In disturbing videos and images, 18 migrant workers can be seen stepping out of a tiny hole in a cement mixer parked alongside a road in Madhya Pradesh after being stopped by police. The group of 18 was trying to reach Uttar Pradesh from Maharashtra and police posted on the border between Madhya Pradesh’s Indore and Ujjain districts had stopped the truck for checking.

Migrant movement during the lockdown posed many challenges for state governments. Disturbing pictures of the migrants were seen at Delhi’s Anand Vihar bus terminal and Mumbai’s Bandra railway station.

Protests broke out at several places across states like Kerala, Telangana, Gujarat, Rajasthan and Andhra Pradesh. The government, amid concerns that the migrant crisis could damage the ruling party politically, then modified its order in the last week of April and said that migrants could move from one state to another. This order was further modified to allow special trains to ferry these migrants back home.

The three-week lockdown was announced on March 25 to stop the spread of coronavirus, first reported in China’s Wuhan in December. The Covid 19-causing virus soon spread to all parts of the world killing 500,000 and infecting 10 million people. The lockdown was later extended till June 30, with certain restrictions eased.