The COVID-19 pandemic has been negatively impacting the entire world economy unprecedentedly, and India is no exception. To prevent the spread of COVID-19, the Government of India declared a nationwide lockdown on March 24, 2020. Sure enough, in a country where 90 per cent of the workforce is attached to the informal sector without adequate social security, such a sudden declaration of lockdown was bound to have a disastrous effect. The situation is, predictably, even worse for migrant labourers who constitute a large section of these informal workers. As can evidently be inferred from the daily news and information from relevant sources, the response to the pandemic threatens to worsen the already-convoluted economic crisis in the country, the extent of which is far more long- lasting and deep-rooted than the direct impact of the pandemic itself. This article tries to explain the dynamics associated with the incidence of reverse migration. It attempts to visualise the incidence of reverse migration in the context of mainstream development theories. It also tries to understand the extent of reverse migration under the COVID-19-led crises. Since there is no official data available to measure the precise extent of reverse migration, this study will draw upon other sources of estimations in this regard.