Pinning blame for the Covid migrant exodus

So, how was the lockdown sudden if many opposition leaders were already asking for it and most states had already implemented various forms of it? Out of work already for several weeks due to state-imposed curfews, daily-wage workers had begun to feel the sharp financial pinch, despite the announcement of free foodgrains by the Centre. With little information about the new virus, coupled with insecurity, these migrants sought to return to the safety of their villages. It was common knowledge that the Indian rural health infrastructure was simply not ready to handle a surge of Covid-19 cases. The WHO and various Indian experts also spoke about halting the movement of people across the country. What good would a lockdown have been if people were freely moving around the country, carrying the virus to places where there was no adequate health infrastructure? The only option for the country was to halt the movement of potential carriers of the virus from urban to rural centres.

The migrants’ exodus, which began as a humanitarian crisis, quickly turned political with fear-mongering being used generously by several opposition leaders. It hardly mattered what speeches they made on social media — Arvind Kejriwal appealing to the migrants to stay put and Uddhav Thackeray in a televised address assured that they’ll be treated humanely — because on the ground, these states simply did not provide for the vulnerable. On March 27, the Ministry of Home Affairs (MHA) sent a notification to the states advising them to make adequate arrangements, which would fulfil the basic human needs of the displaced migrants. But should it need an MHA directive for state governments to provide for the most vulnerable?

On April 2, Rs 11,000 crore was sent to states so that they would be able to cope with the financial burden of providing the amenities outlined by the MHA. Unfortunately, as events unfolded, it became clear that many states failed to use these funds. As per several reports and self-proclaimed numbers, Maharashtra’s government made arrangements for only seven lakh migrants when over two crore migrants (a conservative estimate) were believed to be working in the state.

The Delhi government liberally allowed movement of the displaced to bus stops and train stations, instead of enforcing a strict lockdown and providing for their needs. Maharashtra, on the other hand, turned a blind eye to rumour-mongering, pushing an already vulnerable population to the brink of panic. Mumbai police did little to stop them from hitting the streets. The uproar on social media by several opposition leaders like Rahul Gandhi, fuelled by videos of migrants returning on foot, only added to the migrants’ anxiety and they eventually began to fully believe that returning home to the villages was their only chance of survival.

On May 1, only after the PM and his team of experts were confident that enough knowledge of Covid-appropriate behaviour had percolated into society, and the healthcare infrastructure had been augmented satisfactorily, did the Centre announce special Shramik trains to ferry the migrants to their homes. The arrangement was that 85 per cent of the cost of each ticket would be borne by the Centre and the remaining 15 per cent by the states who could then choose to charge the migrants if they wished to. Following this, the political discourse turned ugly when chief ministers like Thackeray began to make unreasonable demands for additional trains to paint themselves as the saviours of the migrants, only to fail to provide enough people to demand all those extra trains. Entering the race, Sonia Gandhi too wrote a letter stating that the Indian National Congress will pay for migrants’ train tickets if the Centre doesn’t. However, despite such a generous offer, no reported fund has been issued by the INC for this purpose, even in Congress-ruled states. Similarly, in yet another demonstration in the second week of May, the Congress party announced provisioning over a thousand buses to send migrants from Rajasthan to UP. However, when a list of number plates of those thousand buses was sent to the UP government, it was found that many of them were junk vehicles registered as auto-rickshaws, cars and trucks. Eventually, considering the security risk, the Congress party had to recall the buses.

Despite heavy politicking, the PM was silent on the issue through the two years of the pandemic. Only now that the issue is behind us, with several migrants successfully rehabilitated in their home states as evidenced by the increased demand for the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme, did he raise the issue in both Houses of Parliament. Predictably, the accused chief ministers and sections of the media are blindly retorting without putting out any facts to demonstrate their sincerity and condemning the prime minister as a liar. Notably, they still refuse to take any accountability for the sorry plight of the migrants, holding the Centre fully responsible.

The writer is a policy and communications strategist. A Nation to Protect: Leading India Through the Covid Crisis is her third book