This a continuation of the Labour Notes South Asia (LNSA) dispatches | We also hope to build a partial archive of posts from the original LNSA mailing list (2000 to 2019) (see list URL) | See archived posts 2004-2005 | [the full webarchive of the list is now unavailable as it has been permanently removed by yahoo on Dec 2019]
This is an urgent appeal for assistance to migrant workers who
are unable to reach their homes due to the current lockdown – free food,
medical care and sanitation at the very least. The sudden imposition of
a 21-day all-India lockdown on 24 March 2020, at just 4 hours’ notice,
has led to horrific consequences for many. This decision, taken without
proper planning, completely overlooked the disastrous impact it would
have on 90 percent of our labour force. Extremely disturbing reports of
the plight of lakhs of migrant labourers in different parts of the
country keep pouring in. [ . . . ]
Was the PM misled by the diabolical
vested interests to impose lockdown? Or this government has chosen to
willfully disregard the suffering of tens of thousands of working masses
in India?
Was the PM misled by the diabolical vested interests to
impose lockdown? Or this government has chosen to willfully disregard
the suffering of tens of thousands of working masses in India?
The country is now in a claustrophobic lockdown. Prime Minister
Narendra Modi made it clear that this scenario should be treated as a
‘curfew’. The police in every state has thereby predictably read the
orders correctly and is brutally beating up, harassing and chasing
down migrants and workers, men and women, who are trekking long, tiring,
hungry and thirsty treks to their distant villages and small towns —
mostly on foot. This is because the government has absolved itself of
all public interest responsibility, except brutal policing, and is not
providing public transport to ferry them back home.
TV and newspapers show images of hungry and emaciated men and women,
young and old, and little children with pots, plastic bags and beddings
on their heads and shulders, walking on empty, metalled roads and
highways, often barefoot, heading towards their distant destinations,
marks a tragic and heart-rending site, reminiscent of forced migrations
during war, riots, mass killings, epidemics and famine.
Indeed, their villages would be at least welcoming compared to the
violent hostility and heartlessness displayed by the cities that they
are leaving behind, and where they build and sustain rich and middle
class urban homes in all their comfort, and provide day-to-day, multiple
services. Here, they were seen as a threat by sections of the selfish
and insulated upper classes – as the carriers of Coronavirus, with which
they had nothing to do.
How are the poor, hardworking, unorganized working classes in Delhi
and in the Hindi heartland, responsible for this global pandemic? This
question has not been answered by the government in its briefings or in
the belated Rs.1.75 lakh crore financial stimulus that the government
has announced. Quite clearly, nothing from this seemingly bloated
stimulus will reach the poor. What is really making impact is the hard
work some of the states like Kerala, Rajasthan, Maharashtra, Orissa,
Jharkhand and Chattisgarh are putting to ensure that the poor do not go
hungry after the central government’s thoughtless act.
In the manner the
BJP-led central government in Delhi has gone about handling this
unprecedented national crisis — there are uncanny fears that there will
be thousands who might die, not due to Coronavirus, but hunger
As millions began to head to their home from distant towns and
workplaces , the big question that has been raging ever since Modi spoke
to the nation and announced the lockdown, came back again with its
stark contradictions — did the government think through this decision?
Did they really calibrate the virtually total collapse of the
economy, the disruption of supply and transport chains, the destruction
of livelihoods and jobs, the suffering and pain of those inflicted by
the disease, the collective social phobia of impending doom, and the
tragic loss of lives?
Seems definitely unlikely. This is similar to that of the dramatic
decision of demonetization in 2016, which epitomised total lack of
preparation and disregard for the mass and individual trauma that people
would have to go through to access their own money deposited in banks.
For days, poor people stood in long queues trying to take out their
hard-earned income. Lakhs lost their jobs. Many small-scale industries
simply shut. Some died while standing in the queue. Others walked miles
in rural and tribal areas to deposit the little cash they had preserved
in their homes.
The tragic lessons of demonetisation was clearly not kept in mind
when Modi took this dramatic decision that could see many more deaths
due to starvation, joblessness and deep penury, than what will be caused
by the virus. Does this government, indeed, realise this grave mistake
they have made, or will it move on, with its usual arrogance and
disregard for consensus? IT IS POSSIBLE that his government took a decision
based on wrong data and similarly flawed estimations of how the country
would react to the pandemic. These are questions that only this
secretive government that has access to data can answer — which they are
loathe to release to analysts so that the nation can come to informed
decisions- could answer.
If one goes by ICMR data, then, on March 25, the total number of
people infected by this virus, which has Chinese origin, was 581 out of
the 24,254 that were apparently tested. This has to be compared to the
5,900 cases that were tested on March 13 yielding 78 patients who tested
positive.
While the number of infected have been growing – pushed up by the
return of many Indians from different countries where Covid19 is raging,
there is no community transmission till now. According to ICMR, the
numbers of infected are stabilizing even when they are testing more
people. ICMR has not strictly followed the protocols of the WHO and
pharma lobbies that want testing to be increased to prevent its spread.
Instead, India is targeting those with travel history by targeting
airports and the hinterland and trying to see whether it can chase down
every carrier.
Due to indifferent testing and checking at the airport, some like the
Bollywood singer Kanika Kapoor of Lucknow, escaped and indulged
themselves among celebrities, politicians and common people, raising
fears of a horizontal spread of the virus; interestingly no one has been
reported to have been infected. Not a single person she took selfies
with, partied or played holi with, has been blighted by the virus, as of now, unless there are cases, which have been camouflaged or suppressed.
Did the government
really calibrate the virtually total collapse of the economy, the
disruption of supply and transport chains, the destruction of
livelihoods and jobs, the suffering and pain of those inflicted by the
disease, the collective social phobia of impending doom, and the tragic
loss of lives?
This brings to the fundamental point — why was the lockdown speeded
up when we hadn’t prepared for the safety of vulnerable migrants,
daily-wagers, small-scale entrepreneurs, and unskilled and skilled
labourers?
If the lockdown was considered necessary to prevent the community
transmission then surely it should have gone through, but couldn’t the
announcement of lockdown — or curfew – wait till the central and state
governments had done the basic stuff of providing food, community
kitchens, shelter, monetary insurance, health facilities, transport, for
its large floating population. An erudite Professor of Public Health
from University of Harvard, Hemant Patel, has similarly wondered why
with no community transmission and low spread and deaths, our government
chose to use the sledgehammer. TO REITERATE, OUR domestic migrants do not present
danger to anyone — they do not carry the virus and they deserved to be
sent home to their villages with dignity — if they wanted to leave. The
same respect the nation has afforded to those returning from abroad and
who constitute the threat of passing on the pandemic to others.
Not a single court has come to the rescue of these wretched of the
earth, as they did in favor of some Indian students stranded in
Kazakhstan. Why couldn’t the state governments with their heart in the
right place, like Kerala, Rajasthan, Chhattisgarh, Jharkhand, Bengal,
Punjab and Maharashtra, be brought on board to put together a national
plan to prevent a human tragedy that is staring point-blank at our
country? ANY SENSITIVEPERSON not brought up
on the Darwinian principle (propounded by Herbert Spencer) of the
‘survival of the fittest’, would weep at the women and children in Delhi
standing in front of a TV reporter with folded hands saying that they
want food. And this is stark starvation in the capital of India during
the time of excess and plenty, including huge stocks in the government
go-downs.
Lockdown has thrown out of gear established supply chains of
essential commodities as more than 5 lakh trucks these goods are
waiting to unload them in markets and mandis at various border check
points. The hungry drivers and their helpers are being brutalised by the
police.One wonders what the advise the police got from Union Home
Ministry?
What is apparent is that in their hurry to take this cold-blooded,
arrogant and anti-people decision, they chose to rely on the flawed
scenario built by lobbies that use British, American and European data
and impose it on Indian reality. In the past they had done it in the
case of HIV-AIDs, Swine flue and SARS- predicting millions of deaths and
devastation of our old civilization. It is these lobbies that have
introduced dodgy experts to influence the discourse in India to show how
bad the condition was and that the only thing that needed to be done
was to furiously increase testing and lockdown the country till the
world awaited the vaccine. One such expert showed Kerala alone having 80
lakh positive patients. In the estimation of this expert, who is not a
disease expert, millions will be infected in the rest of the country by
the months of April-May. By March 25, according to this calculation,
the infected would be in lakhs. ICMR report of March 25, as elucidated
above, shows only 600 odd have tested positive.
This brings to the
fundamental point — why was the lockdown speeded up, like
demonetization, when we did not have a single window to look after our
vulnerable migrants, daily-wagers, small-scale entrepreneurs, and
unskilled and skilled labourers. After all who leaves their villages to
work in the cities?
Why was this particular health economist, with links to
multinationals, allowed so much play in the Indian media, and by whom?
What was the ulterior motive behind this hysteric propaganda of
collective doom? Sources in the health ministry and the government are
not unfamiliar with their ways and are taking their advise with a pinch
of salt. If India emerges relatively unscathed from the virus then it
would realize the criminal implications of this organized scare
mongering that tried to change policy prescriptions of the country by
ushering in technologies that violate individual’s privacy and are not
subjected to democratic scrutiny. These experts were also used to trash
China and obfuscate the influence the big pharma lobby has over the WHO.
There was obvious obfuscation from these lobbies about Coronavirus
and how it is confined to a narrow geographical latitudinal bands and
also how virus struggles to survive in temperatures beyond 25 degrees
Celsius. Certain other facts were hidden to spread fear. Sections of the
media, funded by these vaccine/corporate lobbies, are guilty of hiding
facts and have resorted to fake news to buttress their point of view.
In the manner the BJP-led central government in Delhi has gone about
handling this unprecedented global and national crisis — there are
uncanny fears that there will be hundreds of thousands who might die in
the wake of Coronavirus, not due to the pandemic, but due to hunger.
Surely, India deserves better governance and an effective and sensitive
government that is cognizant of its responsibility towards the country’s
most vulnerable.
NEW
DELHI — The workers set out on foot in the wee hours of the morning for
villages hundreds of miles away, walking along the roads they helped
build and past apartment towers they helped raise.
Chandra
Mohan, a 24-year-old plumber in a suburb of India’s capital, left at 3
a.m. on Friday. By midmorning, he had walked 28 miles, one bag on his
back and another slung across his chest. He still had more than 600
miles to go to reach his home in the state of Bihar.
Mohan
is one of thousands of people leaving India’s largest cities one
footstep at a time, fleeing a pandemic in a historic exodus. There are
no planes, no trains, no interstate buses and no taxis. So Mohan walked
east with 17 other young men, all laborers like him. They were unsure of
their route or where they would sleep or how they would eat, but one
thing was certain: Without work, they cannot survive in the city.
AD
“We’re doomed,” Mohan said bitterly. “If we don’t die of the disease, we’ll die of hunger.”
India has begun a 21-day nationwide lockdown — the biggest in the world — in a desperate bid to stop the coronavirus from spreading out of control in this densely populated nation of 1.3 billion people. There are more than 700 confirmed cases in India,
a number that is rising rapidly. Nonessential businesses are shut,
state borders are closed to regular traffic, and people have been asked
to stay in their homes except to buy food or medicine.
Chandra
Mohan, right, a plumber working in a Delhi suburb, is walking to his
village, 680 miles away in another state. Hundreds of migrants like him
have been forced to leave the capital as jobs have disappeared. (Niha
Masih/The Washington Post)
The
suspension of passenger trains, the backbone of India’s transportation
system, was announced Sunday with nearly immediate effect. Then, on
Tuesday, Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi declared the all-India lockdown.
Three
days later, Indians were adjusting to a starkly different reality.
Reports of widespread harassment of citizens by police had eased even as
bottlenecks persisted in the distribution of essential goods in some
parts of the country.
The
speed of the transportation shutdown meant that India’s tens of
millions of internal migrants had no time to get home. Indian cities
rely on a vast workforce drawn from the rest of the country, laborers
who move in search of opportunity and often leave their families behind
for months or years. They work construction, drive taxis, staff
restaurants and much more, living frugally and returning home each year.
For
such migrant workers, who are often employed in low-paid, precarious
jobs, the measures are a double blow. The economic shock has vaporized
their incomes while the transport restrictions eliminated their normal
ways home.
The
result has been a walking exodus of thousands of people. Precisely how
many are on the move is not clear, but since the lockdown was declared,
each day has brought fresh reports of migrants trying to get home. Some
have managed to hitch rides on trucks, or jam themselves into crowded
private buses.
Hundreds
of migrants in Delhi are walking on foot to villages miles away, with
little food and water, after India announced a 21-day lockdown. (Niha
Masih/The Washington Post)
The
last time so many people were traveling long distances on foot was in
1947, during the bloody partition of the Indian Subcontinent, said
Chinmay Tumbe, the author of a recent book
on migration in India. When India became independent and Pakistan was
created, millions of people fled to the other side of newly drawn
borders. “Even then we had transport options,” Tumbe said. “There were
trains running.”
AD
There
are already signs that workers are turning to smugglers in the hopes of
getting home. Authorities found hundreds of people crammed into trucks
and believe hundreds of others hid inside an empty freight car to move
from one end of the country to the other, according to a local media report.
Rajiv
Khandelwal is executive director of Aajeevika Bureau, an organization
based in Rajasthan focused on migrant workers. His group has received
“an avalanche” of distress calls in recent days, he said. Many callers
are stranded at state borders, unable to cross and running out of food
after losing their jobs.
“Everybody
has a right to go home when so much fear and frenzy has been created,”
Khandelwal said. “This is no way to condemn people on whose hard work
these cities prosper.”
In
its rush to institute a nationwide lockdown, India offered no formal
help to poor migrants. That stands in sharp contrast to its treatment of
citizens stranded abroad because of the pandemic: The government
organized special flights to bring Indians home from China, Iran and
Italy.
Arjun
Kumar, 20, and his four cousins came to Delhi to work over the past
year, earning $4.50 a day on construction sites. But there has been no
work for days. Their home is more than 450 miles away in Basti, a
district in the state of Uttar Pradesh. On Friday, they walked east
under a light drizzle on roads emptied of traffic.
Kumar
carried a purple shoulder bag printed with teddy bears and urged the
group to keep moving. At least in their village, they won’t starve, he
said. “Here in the city, who will feed us?”
Most
of the people walking are men, many of them young, but there are also
some families. Payal Kumar, 19, sat on the edge of a sidewalk Friday,
using a scarf as a makeshift mask. She was barefoot; her only pair of
sandals had broken as she walked. Her group’s water was gone, she was
tired and had no idea how long it would take to reach their home 150
miles away.
Anar
Singh, a hotel worker with his family, hopes to reach their village,
150 miles away, on foot. (Niha Masih/The Washington Post)
Payal
Kumar, 19, is walking barefoot on a Delhi road after her sandals broke
from a seven-hour walk. (Niha Masih/The Washington Post)
Kumar
was walking with her sister Divya and her sister’s in-laws. One of
them, Anar Singh, 35, works as part of the housekeeping staff at a
Radisson hotel. His employer told him to stop coming to work nine days
ago when the hotel closed down. He says he has yet to receive his salary
for the month. He had about $5 in his pocket.
AD
The
group carried bags containing a few items of clothing and some
flatbreads to eat. They hoped to be able to shelter in a shop or market
at night. “For now, we have to keep walking,” Singh said.
Near
one of Delhi’s long-distance bus stations, migrants converged in the
vain hope that some transport might be available. By midmorning, they
numbered in the hundreds. Stick-wielding police officers began herding
them down the road.
One
officer stopped a group of migrants and used a loudspeaker to make an
announcement. “You have to maintain a distance of at least one meter
from each other,” he said. The weary crowd dutifully shuffled a bit
apart. A good Samaritan pulled up and offered biscuits and tea from the
back of a motorcycle.
Rajesh
Mishra, 30, a painter who had been walking for four hours, listened to
the officer’s speech. His home is 500 miles away in the city of
Gorakhpur. “We’re stuck,” he said. “Either we stay and die, or leave and
die.” Then he turned and joined the stream of people stretching into
the distance.
Internal
migrants, mostly from poor, rural areas have been hardest hit in
India’s strict lockdown as work has come to a halt and transport has
shut down. (Niha Masih/The Washington Post)
Real social distancing: Special planes for India’s rich, police lathis for working-class poor
Thousands
of working-class poor are on the move due to the coronavirus lockdown
imposed by Modi with only four hours' notice, only to face a brutal
police crackdown.
People
walk back to their villages along the Delhi-Meerut Expressway. The
lockdown has shut all means of interstate public transport | Praveen
Jain | ThePrint
Text Size:
India has no dearth of intelligent people. They link the sound of conch shells and clapping with vibrations and scientific equations that can kill any virus. They can even link the 21-day nationwide lockdown
to planetary constellations. But they will never be able to connect
with the country’s marginalised people — the poor, migrant workers and
daily labourers.
Thousands of labourers and working-class poor are being forced to move
from one place to another due to the coronavirus lockdown imposed by
Prime Minister Narendra Modi with only four-hours notice. Many of them
are walking hundreds of kilometres carrying their children on their
shoulders. These people have already been adjudged as the casualties in
the war against coronavirus. While imposing the lockdown, no one spared a
thought about what would happen to them.
No one was worried for them even in February, when a wide-eyed India
welcomed US President Donald Trump with open arms. At that time, the
poor were seen as a cause for embarrassment, and their slums were hidden
behind a wall to make sure Trump doesn’t see them.
But the upper-class was still not done. The rich returned from their
travels abroad carrying the novel coronavirus. The Narendra Modi
government didn’t stop them from entering the country or screen them
properly. By the time the government could detect the ‘infected’, it was
too late. The damage had been done. Restrictions came in, which led to
thousands of Indians getting stuck in foreign countries. The Modi
government promptly ordered special planes to fly and bring them back.
But within India, the government couldn’t see the millions of poor
people affected by the pandemic. Not a single vehicle was arranged for
them — after all the trains, buses, autos and rickshaws had been
stopped. Many of these people don’t know what coronavirus, quarantine,
Covid-19 or lockdown means. It’s not their fault that they don’t. Also read: How lockdown is disrupting the village economy in UP, one farmer at a time
The great divide
India reported its first positive
Covid-19 case on 30 January. The Modi government had all the time in
the world but it didn’t wake up to the plight of India’s poor. As the
days passed, the government started making some arrangements — for the
rich coming from abroad. Then came the festival of Holi. Most travellers
during this period were people from the poor and marginalised section.
They had no way to prepare and protect themselves, no idea that a deadly
virus was also on the move. The virus was being passed on by the rich and most poor people had little contact with them.
The poor didn’t even know what had happened. One day they were told to clap and bang utensils — taali and thaali
— so they did. Then suddenly, they were told they can’t step out and
that essential goods like rice and wheat would be home-delivered.
For people who buy one kg wheat, tea and sugar every day, this seemed
like Ram Rajya. They wouldn’t have to step out for anything. But they
also knew that Ram Rajya can only come in Ayodhya (where Ram was born),
and not for people in Hastinapur, where life can only be a Kurukshetra.
And so they walked,
barefoot, without food or water, to go back to their villages. The
cities had shut their doors for them. But it wasn’t going to be easy.
The police they ran into at every state border, every checkpoint, treated them as if they were roaming the streets with the coronavirus.
During this period of lockdown, a section of Indian society will easily protect itself. It will spend these 21 days doing all kinds of things
at home — trying out new recipes, learning new skills, reading books,
watching films, taking online courses, exercising. Three days into the
lockdown and this group has already set things in motion. But another
section is running from pillar to post in search of rice and wheat,
getting beaten up by the police for defying the government, taking blows
from anyone who is unhappy to see them on the streets, having its
roadside thelas — and their livelihoods — turned upside down.
After 21 days, we will see a new India. On one end will be the children
of Kalidas and Varāhamihira; on the other will be survivors of this
crusade.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi has equated the fight against coronavirus with the Mahabharata. He’s right. India’s poor are like those soldiers in the Mahabharata’s battle units — the various Akshauhinis — whom no one knew but remembered as having been of some use in the war. Views are personal.
Was the PM misled by the diabolical vested interests to
impose lockdown? Or this government has chosen to willfully disregard
the suffering of tens of thousands of working masses in India?
