India races to restore order after protests over ‘lockdown’

Bloomberg

State governments across India rushed to restore order after violence and chaos broke out when the country started relaxing its stringent virus lockdown, with migrant workers clashing with police in western India.
In Mumbai, India’s financial capital, local police said on Twitter that from Tuesday standalone shops would issue tokens to customers to avoid crowding around storefronts. It used the hashtag #MaintainSoberDistance. It’s unclear so far whether the upheaval will continue or whether state governments will step in to enforce more curbs.
The country on May 04 partially eased movement curbs across all but the worst infection-hit areas in an attempt to restart its stalled economy.
“You can’t suddenly shut down a country of a billion-plus people without causing large-scale social and economic disruption, and you can’t expect the process of gradually opening it up again to be a seamless transition,” said Michael Kugelman, deputy director and senior associate for South Asia at the Washington-based Wilson Center. “New Delhi will inevitably confront new obstacles as it eases the lockdown.”
PM Narendra Modi announced the nationwide lockdown in nighttime television address on March 24, giving the country less than four hours of notice before the curbs came into effect. Modi has so far not commented on May 04’s events.
The prolonged lockdown has hit millions of daily wage earners and migrant workers across the nation of 1.3 billion as jobs and income dried up overnight, leaving them penniless and stranded in the cities where they worked. With all forms of transport barred by the lockdown, many started a desperate journey back to their villages on foot and on bicycles.
Others have been stuck in the compounds of now-shuttered factories where anger has been brewing. In Surat, an industrial and diamond processing hub in the western state of Gujarat, television footage showed police using tear gas to control crowds of angry workers, who pelted them with stones and demanded to be allowed to go home. Similar protests erupted in the city earlier in the lockdown.
The federal government announced it would start running special trains from May 1 to transport the stranded migrant workers. Local authorities will screen the passengers and only those found to be symptom-free would be allowed to travel, the home ministry said.
But some impoverished workers say they were made to pay a fare for their journeys, prompting Sonia Gandhi, the president of the opposition Congress Party, to announce her party would bear the cost for the migrants’ travels. About 85% of the transport costs of the special trains was borne by Indian Railways, while the states must pay the remaining 15%, Lav Agarwal, a senior official of the health ministry said in New Delhi.
India’s easing of restrictions is primarily aimed at reviving its economy, which could be heading for its first full-year contraction in more than four decades, as the world’s biggest lockdown has crippled business activity and put a lid on consumption. It has also resulted in widespread job losses and pay cuts.