When governments finally acted, it was only under duress—to reluctantly comply with the Supreme Court and the High Court orders, but every means was deployed to scuttle the spirit of the orders.

By A Suneetha & Sarath Davala

When migrant workers want to return home, given that the interstate bus or rail transport services have not returned to normalcy, whose responsibility is it to transport them? Who should bear the cost? With no income and unable to sustain themselves, they landed on the highways soon after the lockdown was imposed, and when some trains started they thronged the main railway stations. It has become a highly contested issue between the central and state governments, host and home states, the executive and the judiciary. When governments finally acted, it was only under duress—to reluctantly comply with the Supreme Court and the High Court orders, but every means was deployed to scuttle the spirit of the orders.

This recalcitrance of the government has posed serious challenges to our Advocacy Lockdown Collective (ALC), one of the many civic networks that sprang up since March to facilitate food and travel for migrant workers. Notwithstanding the court orders, making the state government address travel arrangements has demanded a Herculean effort—being present on the highways and at railway stations, keeping in touch with the workers to inform them about available Shramik trains or privately arranged buses, maintaining lists of workers with all meticulous details including their contact and Aadhaar numbers, petitioning the inaccessible officials about the necessary arrangements, actively writing in the media, and approaching the High Court, through Public Interest Litigations, to make the reluctant senior and local officials act.

In May and June, our major challenge has been to push the government to provide temporary shelter for the walking migrants on the National Highway 44, and then to arrange travel for them, be it by road or by Shramik trains. After much persuasion, the local officials did open temporary shelters but closed them down as soon as the day’s batch left. Despite the court orders, there was a reluctance to continue the shelter on the Medchal Highway.

The month of May was also the time when the brick-kiln workers’ contracts came to an end, and they had to leave for their home state, mostly Odisha. The normal practice was that their employers paid their travel cost. When they saw that the government or NGOs were organising their travel, some of them began dumping truckloads of brick-kiln workers on the highway. Another Public Interest Litigation was required to arrange Shramik trains for their travel. The High Court deployed an Advocate Commissioner to inspect the field situation and make recommendations. This has led to an enabling order, but to make the order work again required the ALC to be vigilant—to alert the authorities about dumping, to ensure shelter, registration and transport by bus or train. Under the watchful eye of the High Court, the Labour Department enumerated the kilns and the workers therein and one more batch of Shramik trains took bulk of the workers home. For those who could not register themselves and were left behind, their owners paid for the state transport buses hired by NGOs.

From June 1 onwards, with train services partially restored, the scene of action shifted from the highway to the Secunderabad railway station. Hundreds of migrant workers reached and waited on the pavement outside the station. Some had the last remnants of their money, and many without any money. The South Central Railway (SCR) zone refused to open their waiting halls even for those with confirmed tickets. And then ensued a tussle between the SCR and the district administration as to who should take care of the migrants, resulting in enormous hardships for the workers waiting outside the station.

To make matters worse, the rains hit Hyderabad earlier than the normal second week of June. Scores of people spent several days on the pavements with no access to toilets and depending entirely on the food distributed by civic groups.

We again knocked the doors of the High Court to arrange a shelter at the Secunderabad railway station, and to implement the Supreme Court orders of free travel for migrants. Under duress, again, the government was forced to convert a small government school near the station as a shelter. The district officials now arranged food and facilitated train travel for people thronging the shelter. But as numbers began to swell, this small space started bursting at the seams. Maintaining any measure of physical distancing became impossible. Frustrated again, we had no option but to again go back to the court asking for a larger shelter.

Be it in Medchal or at the Secunderabad railway station, we noticed reluctance on the part of the government to operate a fulltime shelter to assist the stranded workers. It is indeed puzzling why there is this reluctance. Perhaps it speaks of larger issues. Is it the fear that temporary shelters would attract more workers wanting to leave? Or is it that the government wants to keep the migrant workers available for the industry as they now begin to open? In that case, how is it that it did not bother to ensure that these workers are provided for? Why were they given only 5 kg rice and Rs 500 cash, that too only once during these three months? Is it because they are not their voters? And do workers cease to count, if they are not voters? Or is it because this experience of taking care of the migrants is entirely new?

Suneetha is a senior fellow and coordinator of the Anveshi Research Centre for Women’s Studies, Hyderabad; Davala is coordinator of the India Network for Basic Income. Views are personal