The heartbreaking scenes of large crowds of inter-state migrant workers walking hundreds of kilometres from their places of work, mostly in urban centres, back to their villages could have been avoided if the lockdown was planned and executed in a phased and calibrated manner. Instead, it took the form of shock therapy, putting this vast segment of India’s workforce under threat of death by COVID-19 away from their dear ones, or of death by exhaustion and starvation in the company of their near ones. With the alarming spread of the virus, there doesn’t seem to be an escape from either of these.