Gear wheels sit in a rack of an automotive component washing machine in India. Photographer: Dhiraj Singh/Bloomberg
When Sunil Arora planned to restart his auto-parts factory in Ghaziabad, just outside Delhi, nearly two months ago, he anticipated fewer workers would turn up.Many of them had returned home after India’s lockdown to contain Covid-19 froze economic activity and prompted a mass exodus unseen since the partition. Amid uncertainty about a recovery, the supplier of pistons, piston-rings and castings to companies including Maruti Suzuki In...