A back-breaking lockdown

The phones at the toll-free labour helpline in Rajasthan’sUdaipur district have not stopped ringing since the news of the total nationallockdown. Hapless migrant workers from Rajasthan and Madhya Pradesh as wellfrom States further afield – UP, Bihar and Odisha – started to cling to trainsand buses that would take them back to the relative safety of their far-flungvillages. Thousands of these workers have not yet made it home. They have beenstopped on sealed State borders or have been disembarked from buses or jeepsand are clueless about reaching home. Many more did not get the chance to leavecities in time and are now stuck in their overcrowded rooms or work sites – inpanic and fear, and also now in growing hunger for there has been no workavailable for days. Stories from the ground signal the advent of desperatetimes — workers stuck in informal settlements, hungry and jobless, asrestaurants, roadside eateries and businesses have closed down. In many cases,even home States appear unwilling to take them in for fear of contagion.

The dismal picture mimics and once again brings alive thesituation faced by people at the time of demonetisation. That time we quicklyoverlooked the anguish of informally employed millions who lost their jobs onaccount of shut downs and slow-downs. They live in congested, shared rooms indegraded slum areas or just in the suffocating confines of their workplaces –construction sites, factories and restaurants – where they’re employed. Theylive and work in possibly the most informal, hazardous and low payingconditions anywhere in the world.  Muchlike refugees everywhere else in the world, migrants are beginning to takeresort to the last option they have, viz. to walk back home. Apart from theimmorality of leaving these workers stranded, this poses complex challenges inthe fight against the pandemic.

   

First things first: well over a hundred million of our ruralpeople are in cities as the principal workforce. They are in every city thathas work. These are the daily wage earners, self-employed casual workers, smallvendors and service providers who, in the suddenness of lockdowns and sealedborders, will not have the basic necessities to survive. There isn’t enoughfood or even clean drinking water anywhere. Many of them may also have beenevacuated from their living spaces – essentially work sites which shut downupon lockdown orders – and they may not have been paid their due wages on thevague promise of things becoming better. Providing free meals or groceries andvegetables is an absolute first. Schools, offices, night shelters and publicspaces have to open up for accommodating migrant workers now adrift withoutsafe places to live. While the Centre and State governments announce reliefmeasures, they have been restricted to local populations with identitydocuments providing domicile status in the city. Migrants, who are unaccountedfor in State and national statistics and consequently fall outside the purviewof all State authorities, live in un-recognised settlements or worksites in thecity, and cannot prove their eligibility through documentation, need to betaken into cognisance while designing relief measures. The universalisation ofall relief measures, with no eligibility barriers, is an imperative at thishour.

Secondly – there’s an immediate need to protect wages andensure that workers are not cheated out of their dues. Protection of wagedenial, fraud and wrongful retrenchments will need more than the power ofbenevolent suggestion as in the PM’s appeal. It will need application of lawand delivery of justice through a deft legal response system which needs to beimmediately put in place – and not be put in freeze because of the lock down.The outcomes of denied wages and lost jobs will be as insidious, if not more,than the health threat facing this population.

Thirdly – and this needs to happen before corporatebail-outs start getting negotiated – we need to ensure that the delivery ofsocial security measures is not suspended. In fact, these need to be prioritisedfor all highly impoverished rural areas that have high levels of wage labourdependence and migration – an immediate determination and advance cash transferof a universal basic income, restoration of MNREGA and clearance of MNREGAdues, increased PDS allocations with the full and purposeful inclusion ofmigrant workers and immediate payouts of pensions.

Fourthly, workers desperate to return home and now intransit must not be denied entry on their home borders. It is preposterous topush hapless workers back to the cities which they are fleeing out ofuncertainty and panic. They can be screened at borders like the peoplereturning from other countries were screened at the airports and the sameprotocols could be followed and precautions taken. Unqualified restriction onmovement across borders is unfounded and is an infringement on their rights.Kerala, Maharashtra, UP and now Rajasthan are announcing emergency measuressuch as cash transfers and PDS for local workers and their families. The uniqueand urgent needs of migrant workers however will need unique and urgentresponses over and above what is being currently imagined. To view them as merevectors of disease is gross injustice. If anything, their limited mobilitywithin cities, confined as they are in its squalor, has made them immenselyvulnerable to diseases like tuberculosis, which takes a far more serious fataltoll. That needs escalated attention.

Ensuring that they remain safe and secure both physicallyand economically calls for a response that transcends all bureaucratic normsthat will restrict their access to services such as identity or domiciledocuments. To have millions of workers stranded at State borders signals asystemic failure that pushes one of the most vulnerable sections of ourpopulation into further indignity and crisis. It is useful to remind ourselvesthat the External Affairs Ministry worked hard to bring expatriates back toIndia before closing off the borders completely; the same courtesy needs to beextended to workers within our borders as well.

Syndicate: The Billion Press

Rajiv Khandelwal is Founder-Executive Director and DivyaVarma leads policy advocacy work at Aajeevika Bureau, a public serviceinitiative migrant workers across Rajasthan, Gujarat and Maharashtra

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