As exodus debate takes political turn, migrants recall: No one told us to leave, we went home as money and ration ran out

Away from the politics over the first pandemic-induced migrant exodus, Mohammad remembers one thing distinctly – the desire to return home. A day after the Prime Minister said the Delhi government had encouraged migrants to head back to their states, and Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal hit back saying this was untrue, Mohammad said all he knows is that weeks after the announcement of the lockdown in March 2020, news had spread of buses being made available at Delhi’s Badarpur to head to Lakhimpur Kheri in Uttar Pradesh.

“I went there along with several people from the area, and got on a bus. I reached my village in Ramgarh by bus, auto, rickshaws – whatever we got, ” he said.

Mohammad, who earns around Rs 12,000 a month, said the reason he decided to return was that he wanted to be with his family and since work had come to a standstill in the capital. “Everyone working here had just one thing in mind – that they wanted to go back. Though the factory owner had allowed us to stay, he also said that if we get a chance, we should try to leave for home.” He said he came back after nine months.

Most of the workers The Indian Express spoke to in areas such as Seelampur, Kanti Nagar and Khari Baoli, where labourers work and reside in large numbers, said key reasons for leaving at the time include work coming to a stop, shortage of ration, fear of being infected with an unknown disease and missing their families during a crisis. None of them said they were encouraged by the Delhi government to leave.

A resident of Hardoi in western Uttar Pradesh, Zameel Hussain, who works at a cloth manufacturing unit, said he took a bus from Moti Nagar a week after the first lockdown was announced. He said the bus dropped him at Shahjahanpur, from where he used other private transport to reach home.

He said the bus was arranged by “some private people”, though he does not know who they are. “Every day the number of migrants around us were decreasing – people kept leaving on foot, by taking lifts, on cycles. So I also had just one thing in mind – that I have to go,” he said.

Ausaf Khan, a 60-year-old mason, said he left Delhi around two weeks after the lockdown, catching a bus from Lal Kuan. “It was a private bus that dropped us till Badaun. People were saying that buses have been arranged at Lal Kuan, so I went there.”

At Old Delhi’s Khari Baoli, several labourers said they waited in Delhi for months hoping that things would improve and work would resume, but left when the lockdown continued longer than expected.

Ranjeet Kumar, who lives in Bihar’s Triveniganj, said he waited two months before heading home. “I wasn’t earning, the food shortage was immense; we ate once a day for weeks,” he recalled. “We workers arranged a bus by putting Rs 2,000 each.”