Migration triggered by the COVID 19 Pandemic Part I
By Malini Shankar
Digital Discourse Foundation
When the Government of India
unequivocally declared on the Floor of Parliament on 14th September 2020,
that there is no data on migrants’ deaths (during the COVID 19 triggered migration,
in March 2020) it seemed quite the icing on the cake for an overwhelmed government
that continues to stare bleakly at governance itself.
The bleak truth remained that
more than 20 million migrant workers – often described as the invisible wheels
of India’s cash economy – departed from the source of their informal cash based
employment to head home for a hand to mouth existence.
Adding insult to injury (quite literally) the Parliament was told on 14th September 2020 on the day the delayed Monsoon Session of Parliament was opened that it was Fake news that spurred the panicky migration. That amounts to denying the Prime Minister’s appeal to the Nation seeking cooperation for the Lockdown. - result of a lack of transparent governance.
If the Lockdown had got
administrative sanction and signed documentation by those governing, it would
perhaps have stood the scrutiny of Parliament. But then the Lockdown was
announced by Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi on national Television without
forewarning.
The most critical votaries of
Modi’s governance allege that he is at best an efficient administrator;
political governance, resting on political consultation is not for him. But
even political ruddering of the Administration seems missing. Bureaucrats and
officials work in fear of losing their jobs in the Modi era.
So, if the Government tells Indian
Parliament that there is no authentic data about migrants’ despair or death it
is also because the economic survey report was not tabled in Parliament before
presentation of the budget. Discarding established covenants of governance
imperils Democracy.
The Indian Prime Minister
Narendra Modi announced a countrywide total lockdown in the country with four
hours-notice triggering an unprecedented humanitarian crisis. About 22 million
Migrant labourers employed as cooks, laundrymen, drivers, cleaners, odd jobs
men, maid servants, construction workers, rickshaw and cab drivers etc, feared loss of food and
livelihood security in their places of work in the mega cities and headed home
facing sun drenched malnourished thirsty walks across the subcontinent.
They started walking back to their homes in other states in the absence of public transport; with the meagre cash savings they had to take back home to account for their absence of domestic duties on home front they could not afford public transport even if it was plying.
39 year Suresh was working as a
freelance driver in Bangalore. Then when Ola and Uber (cab hailing app based
services) started operating in Bangalore, he took a loan, and bought a car and
leased it out to Uber working as driver himself.
“When the lockdown came, I could
neither earn nor repay my loan. Some car owners working with Uber managed to
supply vegetables or other deliverables for E Commerce companies. But I could
not afford it as my car was still mortgaged”.
"I simply left my car with Uber,
packed my bags, and relocated with my wife and son to my hometown in a rural
area south of Bangalore. Whenever my regular customers call me I now beg them
to create a livelihood opportunity for me" says Suresh, blinking to fight his tears.
Living with my aged and
impoverished parents is not only shameful for me, but very hard on all of us
emotionally. My parents might not explicitly say so, but they are not able to
bear the fiscal strain on them.
The crisis is not entirely linked to COVID
19 per se but linked to the sudden announcement of lockdown, the lack of
policies to provide a safety net for the migrant labour and the abdication of
labour by their employers.
Their desperate bid to reach home
by the riskiest means – trucks, walking barefoot with small children, pregnant
ladies, in containers, overloaded cargo vehicles, is a crisis of hunger, a
rupture of the rural – urban relationship that has been highly extractive of
the vibrancy of our villages, returning back in even greater desperation with
few alternatives in sight.
This is not migration of hope but of despair and a silent assertion of their lack of faith in the state and urban societies. In the first two weeks of the lockdown, more people died of accidents in trying to walk home than from the infection.
The stream of migration from
cities to villages began in the first few days after the lockdown and has
continued to increase. We have seen families walk home, often without footwear on
their feet, water for their parched lips.
From Mankhurd in Mumbai, about 5
trucks full of people left for UP in North India a few weeks into the lockdown.
3 of these were apprehended at the highway tollgates. People lost the money
they had paid to the truck owners-drivers, were beaten up by the police and
then had to seek shelter back in the city. A tempo (cargo van) carrying 48
people overturned near Parbhani, injuring 24 people and killing a young child.
These people who cleaned the
drains in Mumbai were going back to the village and arranged a tempo as there
were no arrangement for intrastate travel. Thousands of other migrants started
walking home to their ‘native places’ often defying the elements.
Pregnant women were walking
hundreds of thousands of kilometres. One exhausted pregnant woman along with
her family collapsed on a railway track and slipped into deep slumber on a very
hot day in April this year, just weeks into the Lockdown.
So sound was their sleep that they did not even feel the vibration of the train on the track. 24 people were mauled to death under the wheels of the speeding train… including a heavily pregnant woman in Nashik, in Maharashtra 2 weeks after the Lockdown commenced.
Almost the entire
below-the-poverty-line population is that of migrant labourers, and it is
believed that they form about 22% of the population. As per census 2011, four
states -UP, Bihar, Rajasthan and MP account for more than 50% interstate
migrants but it is not the South but Maharashtra, Delhi, UP, Haryana and
Gujarat which house more than 50% migrants.
UP figures in both lists.
Inter-state movement however came down during the 2001-11 period from 55% to
33% while intra state migration rose to 58% from 30%. 28 year old Manoj Singh
from Kanpur in Uttar Pradesh in North India migrated to Bangalore in South
India in 2005 in search of employment.
Not finding anything in the
formal livelihood sector he started a Chaat shop – an Indian street food shop
on the outskirts of rapidly growing Bangalore. He made brisk business earning
about Rs. 18000 (about € 207; US $ 244.569) a month.
He could barely eke out a living. Impressed with his hard work and enterprise another street food shop owner – (locally called Chaat Bhandar) employed him. But he was more or less left to fend for himself as the shop owner put the onus on Manoj Singh to raise revenue for shop rent, ingredients for the Chaat business as well as his own monthly salary.
He found himself sandwiched when
the lockdown came in March 2020. “With the entire population locked down for
fear of the Pandemic that would ostensibly last 18 days (if I should have believed
the Prime Minister) losing revenue for 18 days spelt doom for me.
“Where could I make and sell
chaat, pay for the shop rent, buy the cooking ingredients and save some money
for myself as salary? I am sandwiched between the devil and the deep sea. I had
to postpone my marriage that had been fixed for me. I have no money even to go
back to my home town in Kanpur” That is unfair both to me and the girl
bethrottled to me.
Migration is considered a force
that evens out the unequal geography of development. In that sense, there is a
linkage between the movements of economy and movements of people.
After the new millennium, there
is a significant change in world polity where the bipolar world has become more
complex and poles of opportunity are more spread out as opposed to the
historical Global North and Global South division.
“Migration also follows this
movement; this is not necessarily a reverse migration, though” says Professor
Amita Bhide Convenor COVID 19 Response, TISS Mumbai speaking to Digital Discourse Foundation
Consequently, the Government’s
Admission implies
that without data of migrants’ deaths there is no question of compensation. This
is because the Government has not presented the Economic Survey Report in Parliament
this year. The Poverty and Equity Brief – a World Bank document
– states:
“Since the 2000s, India has made
remarkable progress in reducing absolute poverty. Between FY2011/12 and 2015,
poverty declined from 21.6 to an estimated 13.4 percent at the international
poverty line (2011 PPP $1.90 per person per day), continuing the historical
trend of robust reduction in poverty.
Aided by robust economic growth,
more than 90 million people escaped extreme poverty and improved their living
standards during this period. Despite this success, poverty remains widespread
in India. In 2015, with the latest estimates, 176 million Indians were living
in extreme poverty.
In this context, the outbreak of
COVID-19 pandemic and the containment measures adopted by the government are
expected to increase poverty in the country. Poorer households are also more
exposed to the risk of COVID-19”.
Indeed almost the entire migrant
population equates to the population below the poverty line. Without livelihood
security at home they have moved across the Subcontinent in search of
livelihood and food security.
To be continued
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