India, May 23 -- Ignorance is like knowledge, it has no limits. The colossal movement of the blue-collar migrant workers back to their home districts has exposed our ignorance about this segment. How could the Centre not anticipate its possibility when it shut down everything on minimal notice, drawing a lakshman rekha around houses on March 25? A planned evacuation, like in the case of a natural calamity, would have helped. This could have also prevented many deaths that the migrant workers are facing almost on a daily basis on the highways and railway tracks.

However, we choose to be wise only when tragedy strikes. After beating around the bush initially, branding the upsurge in COVID-19 cases as a conspiracy by certain Chief Ministers...