prasad1
Active member
Finally, we are seeing things as they actually are. The ‘India story’, whatever it may have stood for, has no legs left anymore. The legs are marching back home, across the length of India, and stopping might mean death. Literally.
Thousands of migrant workers are walking back to their villages and small towns through what is arguably the harshest lockdown in the world. No work, no wages and no means of transport to return home meant they had to fend for themselves, be atmanirbhar. And so, workers have been on the move for over a month-and-a-half with whatever little belongings they have, accompanied by family members, some of them small, tired children who have to carry on in the punishing heat as though it is the most natural thing to do. But it isn’t, and the pictures are unforgiving, unconscionable.
Any blinkers that may still be on about the leaps of ‘progress’ that India has made during the last three decades should have come off by now. We always knew how dire the condition of the working poor in our cities was, but to see it enacted in this manner has jolted us out of our collective reverie.
Other than those going back, there are at least eight crore migrants across the states, according to the central government’s own estimates, who are non-card holders and hence can’t access food grains from the state. The Centre has belatedly promised free grains to them for the next two months — 51 days into the lockdown — but this is unlikely to help much. According to a recent report by the Stranded Workers Action Network, a group of volunteers responding to distress calls from migrants across India, over 82% of the 12,248 workers who reached out to them did not receive rations from state governments and 64% of 9,981 people had less than Rs 100 left with them. If this is anything to go by, we will have to deal with far worse than what we have encountered until now.
The question before us is really this: What kind of a system allows the State to abnegate its responsibility towards a large section of its population, even if it is to save lives and make sure medical facilities are not overwhelmed? Although the world over countries are struggling, nothing matches the scale of the humanitarian disaster unfolding in India.
Thousands of migrant workers are walking back to their villages and small towns through what is arguably the harshest lockdown in the world. No work, no wages and no means of transport to return home meant they had to fend for themselves, be atmanirbhar. And so, workers have been on the move for over a month-and-a-half with whatever little belongings they have, accompanied by family members, some of them small, tired children who have to carry on in the punishing heat as though it is the most natural thing to do. But it isn’t, and the pictures are unforgiving, unconscionable.
Any blinkers that may still be on about the leaps of ‘progress’ that India has made during the last three decades should have come off by now. We always knew how dire the condition of the working poor in our cities was, but to see it enacted in this manner has jolted us out of our collective reverie.
Other than those going back, there are at least eight crore migrants across the states, according to the central government’s own estimates, who are non-card holders and hence can’t access food grains from the state. The Centre has belatedly promised free grains to them for the next two months — 51 days into the lockdown — but this is unlikely to help much. According to a recent report by the Stranded Workers Action Network, a group of volunteers responding to distress calls from migrants across India, over 82% of the 12,248 workers who reached out to them did not receive rations from state governments and 64% of 9,981 people had less than Rs 100 left with them. If this is anything to go by, we will have to deal with far worse than what we have encountered until now.
The question before us is really this: What kind of a system allows the State to abnegate its responsibility towards a large section of its population, even if it is to save lives and make sure medical facilities are not overwhelmed? Although the world over countries are struggling, nothing matches the scale of the humanitarian disaster unfolding in India.
