Sitting comfortably at home, with a computer screen in front, and a full belly, if I pretend to understand the misery of a migrant worker trudging hundreds of miles back home, I am lying.
On social media, there is anger, appeal, and acrimony among groups and individuals, and plethora of images and videos depicting the sufferings, which has become synonymous to migrant workers’ exodus.
A crisis as unprecedented as the COVID-19 just underscores the fault lines of a sector that has never been cared for. India’s growth story is a typical case of a poor household of many children where one or two break the shackles of poverty and make to the next level of economic ladder, bringing in a feel good factor to the entire household.
While such a predicament makes the family proud of its singular progress, the fate of many still remain the same, largely struggling to carve a decent living.
India is one of the fastest growing economies of the world, but for the last three decades, economic inequality has been sharply increasing too. The tilt from the socialist to the capitalist nature of Indian economy is glaring as Oxfam reveals that the top 1% of the population holds 73% of the country’s wealth.
The survey also points to the sharp increase in the number of new billionaires added each year. Between the year 2000 and 2017, the number of billionaires grew from 9 to 101, which would seem impressive for a growing economy like India. But in a country of 1.3 billion people when the billionaires’ fortunes get higher than the Union budget for the fiscal year 2018-19 (INR 24422 billion), there is a need to question the gagging economic inequality.
Contrary to that picture of ever increasing wealth and prosperity is the grim reality of over 139 million internal migrant workers in the country (Census 2011), an exodus forced on them in prospect of better economic opportunities.
The Economic Survey of India 2017 estimates that the inter-state migration between 2011 and 2016 was annually around 9 million. Most of these migrant workers make way to states like Delhi, Gujarat, Maharashtra, Tamil Nadu, Andhra Pradesh, and Kerala from the rural areas of Uttar Pradesh, Bihar, Madhya Pradesh, Punjab, Uttarakhand, West Bengal, and Jammu and Kashmir.
Mostly away from their home state, these migrant workers are no good vote banks for political parties and therefore, are largely forgotten. They live under most inhospitable conditions, and are often exploited by labor contractors. They are primarily unskilled workforce who have no security with regard to wage, health care, or life while working under perilous conditions. It needs to be understood that the place they work does not even provide permanent shelter to them. Most of this workforce follows seasonal migration.
For a country where millions live in makeshift arrangements, the announcement of a sudden shutdown on March 25 came as a calamity. It hit the migrant workers the hardest. With no proper planning and coordination at the federal level, and the central government’s nonchalant attitude towards the depraved, what unfolded was a colossal tragedy and a relentless tale of pain and suffering. Thousands of workers, with their families set on foot to their homelands to save themselves from starvation in the big cities they were trapped, which no longer provided work and food.
Every day somber incidents of road mishaps, lost lives and hopeless journeys were reported on news channels and social media while the government had no will to solve the problem. Some of the contributions from the bureaucratic machinery came in the form of beatings and police highhandedness, over the hapless travelers.
The central government on its part can definitely claim to have acted in earnest by announcing a surprise shutdown to curb COVID-19 transmission. But it must be realized that during March, India did not report any case of community transmission of the disease. So, if a regulated transport was made available for the stranded workers, in coordination with the respective state governments to quarantine the incoming people, millions would not have suffered endlessly. Covid-19’s spread across the globe started as early as January, so the central government had enough time to devise a strategy to suit the country’s specific needs.
Two months on, with the lockdown partially eased and apparently some measures taken to ensure that the stranded reach their destinations, bureaucratic apathy has hogged the limelight once again, pushing the real issue into insignificance. First in the line of controversies was the order of the Karnataka government to cancel special trains to ferry migrant workers to other states.
There were also reports of stranded workers being beaten and chased away by the police from the bus stand in Bengaluru. And by now almost 40 special trains have detoured and reached unexpected destinations, which is hard to explain. On any regular day Indian Railways runs 20,000 long and short distance passenger trains, while currently it is just operating 15 special trains and 300 Shramik specials for ferrying stranded migrant workers. The railway authorities have sighted traffic congestion as the reason for such harrowing train detours, which is no more than a hollow excuse or a sinister cover up.
If hitherto there was any illusion of India as a country that strives to attain social equality as scripted in its preamble, this pandemic has stripped it and laid the reality of glaring social injustice at the front – ugly and deplorable as it may seem. Some state governments are bothered by the sudden surge of COVID- 19 cases in their states as the migrant workers reach their homes, while others are busy amending labor laws to appease probable investors assuring them cheap, dutiful labor. Migrant workers on the other hand who just want to return home are in for another shock awaiting them. Meanwhile, the International Labour Organisation (ILO) has expressed concern over the “unilateral suspension” of labour laws by various state governments, and it has urged the Indian prime minister to uphold the country’s international commitment.
While the apex court and the elected representatives of states have been quick to take strict measures to serve businesses, they chose to deliberately ignore the serious issue of unpaid salaries of migrant workers. Even a Public Interest Litigation, filed by activists Anjali Bhardwaj and Harsh Mandar, to seek immediate government action for the payment of minimum wages met an indifferent response from the Supreme Court bench.
Is this nonchalance a systemic response by various agencies of bureaucracy to keep the inflow of a subdued workforce to support the businesses? If so, can we still call the country, a welfare state? The current state of labor exploitation and deprivation of labor rights is nothing less than a brutal assault on the statute of ‘Socialism’ and a terrible shift in government policy from inclusive governance to bureaucratic apathy that prefers to protect the privileged.