One traumatic fallout from India’s protracted coronavirus lockdown has been the horrendous plight of our migrant workers. When lockdown was announced at four hours’ notice on March 24, trains and buses stopped suddenly, factories shut abruptly and millions of migrants lost their livelihoods.
Since then, millions of migrant labourers, including pregnant women and mothers carrying small children, have been trudging painfully back to their homes. Many have been walking for 10 days or more, with little food, water or shelter, in the blazing summer heat, covering distances of 200km to 1,500km. Dozens have died in rail and road accidents.
The crisis should have impelled all political parties to galvanise their cadres to look after the migrants. The ruling Bharatiya Janata Party has the auxiliary Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh, and parties from the opposition Indian National Congress to the western Shiv Sena and southern DMK have party workers and followers in every village and district. All political parties have some representation, down to hamlets with populations of 2,000 or smaller. I can confidently write this, having worked for decades deep in the rural areas while employed at a multinational selling soap and cooking fat.
These party cadres could have provided food, water and shelter to the migrant labourers, and arranged transport to get them home. They would have earned massive goodwill through this yeoman service. With government employees busy enforcing the lockdown and organising the supply chain, party cadres should have sunk their ideological differences and risen to the occasion.
03:35
Coronavirus: India’s migrant workers desperate to return home after lockdown
Coronavirus: India’s migrant workers desperate to return home after lockdown
India’s stimulus package, details of which were laid out by the finance minister over five days, has inspired neither industrialists nor businessmen. The stimulus, principally in the form of loans to farmers and small businesses, offers no immediate succour. There is no relief for the millions of migrant workers. Salaried workers could have been given tax concessions in this dreadful year, in which many will lose their jobs. We have a situation where the patient is bleeding on the operating table but the doctors are busy prescribing post-surgery medication. We must first save the patient!
01:57
Indian migrant workers walk home amid coronavirus lockdown
Indian migrant workers walk home amid coronavirus lockdown
The government claims its 20 trillion rupees (US$265 billion) stimulus plan is about 10 per cent of India’s gross domestic product (GDP). But institutions such as HSBC, State Bank of India, Nomura, CLSA and Citibank believe the package is a mere 0.8-1.2 per cent of GDP. This much-awaited stimulus package will not assuage India’s deep economic wounds sustained from the lockdown. The hawkers, factory workers, small traders, shopkeepers and marginal farmers of India will continue to wallow in poverty and desperation.
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Rajendra Aneja, Mumbai
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