prasad1
Active member
Ultimately, their deaths proved how closely, during the lockdown, their fates were linked with trains. The trains they waited for to take them home, which did not come; the train they were not expecting but which came with a sense of finality early Friday morning (May 8), cutting short the homeward journey of 16 migrant workers near Aurangabad.
Driven by a distress the rulers of the land have been impervious to, the group of men and women had started walking from Jalna, in Maharashtra, towards Madhya Pradesh, on Thursday (May 7) evening. Adding to the civilisational journeys of the dispossessed that have become synonymous with the lockdown.
After walking for 45 km, weary to the bone, they lay down to sleep on the rail track at about 3:30 am. They must have thought it was completely safe. After all, they knew from bitter experience that passenger trains were not running; it was why they were walking all the way to Bhusawal, a couple of hundred kilometres away, in the hope of catching a Shramik special that would take them closer home to their destination in Madhya Pradesh.
In the absence of the train they so desperately wanted to board, the track must have seemed oddly comforting. As someone mentioned, they call those planks ‘sleepers’.
At 5:15 am, they were killed as a goods train ran over them. A newspaper report says they were aged between 20 and 35.
If there was any certitude in the lives of migrant workers across the country in 40 odd days of lockdown, it was that trains were not running, let alone on time. The implacable set of face of a supreme leader given to dramatic and ‘strong’ actions – “in four hours, the Rs 500 notes will be worthless; in four hours the nation will be under lockdown” – had made sure that rail services would come to a grinding halt.
The fear of the virus was all too real, as the world is discovering day by day. The message conveyed was that airports, rail and bus stations, factories, bazaars, offices, schools, restaurants, hotels and playgrounds had to fall silent immediately.
What was left unsaid was that everything has a cost. The cost of the lockdown at midnight was clear – the inexorable descent into despair of the country’s vulnerable migrant workers. Because work had ground to a halt, they were expendable till the lockdown lasted. If they were not needed, they did not exist.
They should have taken it on the chin. Even when all avenues of survival were closed to them, poverty and privation were curses they were used to. It was their lot to be invisible. That was the expectation – both during the early days when they were bereft of work, shelter, money and food, and later, when industries opening up, wanted the labour captive.
They could not fulfil that expectation. Sometimes, when there is too much iron in the soul of a nation, and a mask unmasks the corrosive indifference embedded deep within, even the most dispossessed are shaken out of their numbness to assert their humanity by dying if they have to. It is difficult to continue living in a place where everyone behaves as if you do not exist.
thewire.in
Driven by a distress the rulers of the land have been impervious to, the group of men and women had started walking from Jalna, in Maharashtra, towards Madhya Pradesh, on Thursday (May 7) evening. Adding to the civilisational journeys of the dispossessed that have become synonymous with the lockdown.
After walking for 45 km, weary to the bone, they lay down to sleep on the rail track at about 3:30 am. They must have thought it was completely safe. After all, they knew from bitter experience that passenger trains were not running; it was why they were walking all the way to Bhusawal, a couple of hundred kilometres away, in the hope of catching a Shramik special that would take them closer home to their destination in Madhya Pradesh.
In the absence of the train they so desperately wanted to board, the track must have seemed oddly comforting. As someone mentioned, they call those planks ‘sleepers’.
At 5:15 am, they were killed as a goods train ran over them. A newspaper report says they were aged between 20 and 35.
If there was any certitude in the lives of migrant workers across the country in 40 odd days of lockdown, it was that trains were not running, let alone on time. The implacable set of face of a supreme leader given to dramatic and ‘strong’ actions – “in four hours, the Rs 500 notes will be worthless; in four hours the nation will be under lockdown” – had made sure that rail services would come to a grinding halt.
The fear of the virus was all too real, as the world is discovering day by day. The message conveyed was that airports, rail and bus stations, factories, bazaars, offices, schools, restaurants, hotels and playgrounds had to fall silent immediately.
What was left unsaid was that everything has a cost. The cost of the lockdown at midnight was clear – the inexorable descent into despair of the country’s vulnerable migrant workers. Because work had ground to a halt, they were expendable till the lockdown lasted. If they were not needed, they did not exist.
They should have taken it on the chin. Even when all avenues of survival were closed to them, poverty and privation were curses they were used to. It was their lot to be invisible. That was the expectation – both during the early days when they were bereft of work, shelter, money and food, and later, when industries opening up, wanted the labour captive.
They could not fulfil that expectation. Sometimes, when there is too much iron in the soul of a nation, and a mask unmasks the corrosive indifference embedded deep within, even the most dispossessed are shaken out of their numbness to assert their humanity by dying if they have to. It is difficult to continue living in a place where everyone behaves as if you do not exist.
The Wire: The Wire News India, Latest News,News from India, Politics, External Affairs, Science, Economics, Gender and Culture
The Wire: The Wire News India, Latest News,News from India, Politics, External Affairs, Science, Economics, Gender and Culture
thewire.in
