The long march back home of India's wingless migrants
Such a long march of migrant workers has never been witnessed in India’s history.
Labour, labour everywhere; not one to labour in my factory – quoth the mighty, industrious industrialist, lamenting fiscal deficit, owing to the recent physical deficit of manual labour. And so, the outward-bound trains from Bengaluru were cancelled – stop the wheels, to turn the wheels of the factories again. Positive thinkers always posit the glass as half full, and a Bengaluru MP in his famously deleted tweet, said, “It will help migrant labourers who came here with hopes of a better life to restart their dreams.” Except that the glass is full this time. Full of despair, and the dream has turned a nightmare for the migrant labourers. With a Rs 1.7 lakh crore package (US$ 23 billion approx.), it is nearly impossible to feed a crore or more people stuck on the long road home.
Let’s not take names in this game. One needs just to dig into the recent past, and one will know the picture of how welcome migrant labourers have been in the destination states. Sheila Dixit had blamed migrants for the disastrous healthcare in Delhi, and she’s been echoed by the king of “aam aadmi”. Maharashtra politics has run for a long time on the thread of the threat of the migrant; Assam has a history of killings. We are talking only about internal migration here. The rest we leave to the masters of rhetoric and such tricks. Everyone wants the hand of labour; no one wants their belly.
This is established an international phenomenon, the fear of the immigrant – whether it is the idea of the wall with Mexico, or Brexit, or the Syrian refugee crisis; or during the Covid 19 crisis everyone blaming everyone else (China, of course, takes the lion’s share in being blamed). Except that in India, these stereotypes and prejudices work not just against immigrants from abroad, but also from within, though the constitution guarantees the right to claim livelihood, dignity, and property (except some places) anywhere on the Indian soil.
It is also interesting that the right to free movement is suspended. Suspension of transport is deterrent enough for people to venture forth unnecessarily. If people choose to walk, for lack of food and shelter, why should they be beaten up? One may criticise the way the USA is handling the matter, but the right to movement still exists with the conditions of social distancing. Is it because there is fear that they are carriers – precisely because there’s been no testing amongst this group, and they are forced to be in groups? Strangely mirroring global politics, there seems to be a wedge between the East and the West in our country too.
East is yeast, West is best
It is interesting that most of the human traffic (since that’s literally the mode of transport right now) is eastward bound, or northward bound. How is it that states rich in rivers, minerals, all kinds of natural resources – Bihar, West Bengal, Uttar Pradesh (Eastern UP mostly), Jharkhand and Orissa have the maximum outflow of migrants? One will have to start from the time of colonial history to dig into this matter, but it is so. The following map (left) shows the inter-state migration picture, as gathered from the Census of 2011 data.
As is evident from this map of destination districts of inter-state migrants, it is the western half of the country where migration happens to, largely. These include major cities like Bengaluru, Mumbai, Surat, Ahmedabad, Delhi, Jaipur, Ludhiana, etc. On the eastern side, the two big dots one sees is Kolkata and Chennai, both of which have declined over time in terms of their economic size.
Kolkata, the capital of British India for a long time, took to decadence post-Independence despite land reforms in the state, turned investment unfriendly when the economy changed, and does not attract migrants the way Delhi or Bengaluru does. It is interesting that the SEZ (Special Economic Zone) map of 2020 roughly parallels this map.
It is noteworthy that these five migration-prone states (UP, Bihar, Jharkhand, West Bengal, Odisha) barely seem to have any SEZs. It would be common sense to have SEZs in these states on a priority basis to contain this massive internal migration. Out of 12.6 million inter-state migrant workers, these states account for around 60 per cent (7.3 million) in 2011. Of these, 90 per cent were male, which point to families living in separation, and male labourers living a very frugal life, so that they can send remittances home. This alone is not the complete picture of migration. The total number of migrants in 2011 was 45.5 crore. Of these, 27.7 crore intra-district migrants, 11.8 crore inter-district migrants, 5.4 crore inter-state migrants and 50 lakh migrants from abroad. Of the 5.4 core inter-state migrants, 1.2 crore migrated for work.
Therefore, during the Covid crisis, it is not just inter-state migrants on the roads to get back home, but those within the states who have moved across districts as well. Such a long march has never been witnessed in India’s history. The only comparable picture perhaps is that of Partition.
Also, out of 52 cities with a million-plus population, 17 hold more than 50 per cent of this inter-state migrant population. This is 60 lakh according to 2011 data, and likely much more now. If we look at the table below, as expected, cities with high population density have a high rate of spread of the virus. Greater Mumbai, Pune, Bhiwandi, Ahmedabad, Delhi, Chennai have recorded a near doubling or more of Covid cases per lakh population between April 29 and May 9.
It’s a strange coincidence that the cities on Trump’s itinerary during his visit to India – Ahmedabad, Delhi and Agra — are also corona hotspots, as also the hub of migrant daily wage workers, as also the industrial hotspots. Amit Chavda, Gujarat Congress president, does not think of this as coincidence and blames the event 'Namaste Trump' for the spread of Covid-19 in Ahmedabad. The ruling party has rubbished this claim saying Trump visited on February 24, and the first case emerged only on March 20. Also noteworthy is that a senior political leader, Badruddin Shaikh, succumbed to Covid-19 in Ahmedabad. The virus, does not indeed, discriminate.
Socially distanced
It is pointless to juxtapose the images of the middle-class playing Ludo on smartphones and the new-found male cheffery, against the poor chauffeuring themselves on their feet. We have all seen images of pregnant women, people carrying children and elderly on their backs, and people who died of walking and hunger. Or died of Covid. Who knows? 37 drivers bringing migrants back from Nanded, Maharashtra to Punjab tested coronavirus-positive. 24 migrants returning from Surat to Odisha tested positive too. We know that India's coronavirus testing rates are among the lowest in the world. The new reports hint that no attempt was made at any point to test the poor who have been jostling for food in queues. Now that the states they are returning to have to play it safe, these stunning matters are coming to light. No wonder, around a hundred journalists in Mumbai have tested positive too, given that they were interacting with the poor on the street.
So, in India, it is indeed ‘social distancing’ as against ‘personal distancing’ – the latter thrown to the dump heap because there is not enough space to distance, and one has to struggle for food or transport in hordes. Social distancing has been achieved indeed – with a couple of state governments ‘reforming’ labour laws, with an exemption for investors from labour laws – in short, legitimising exploitation, instead of learning a lesson on how important manual labour is to economy.
It is ironical that the virus has come riding on aeroplanes, but there is barely any provision for these poor walkers even of trains. So far, only 183 Shramik Express trains have operated. At its current average of 37 trains per day, it would take approximately three quarters of a year (284 days) to relocate 1.26 crore migrant workers.
It is difficult to fathom what forms of ‘social distancing’ are going to emerge post this crisis, with an impoverished lot being impoverished further. We have already seen ‘society’ citizens checking the Aadhar card of vegetable vendors and things of that order. Will there be a return to other forms of discrimination?
The plight of walking workers wasn’t worthy of the Twitterati until a goods train mowed down 16 people on May 8. Then Twitter was abuzz with empathy, and #MeTooMigrant started trending with smug middle-class bankers comparing their diaspora status with that of migrant daily wagers. A veteran actor, meanwhile, tweeted that if one adds the year of one’s birth to one’s age, one gets 2020 – this occurs once in 1000 years.
If the actor tries this for last year, he would get 2019 as the answer, and so for 2018 too – and that would happen for every given year. It’s a good joke to crack. We have been schooled to be fooled, or to be ruled — take your pick.
The postcolonial states with their spelling errors, hauntings and spells have finally reached a consensus on “off the people; bye, the people!”
(With Rabiul Ansary)