Tag: Deaths Of Migrant Workers

No Country For Migrant Workers

By Kunal Bose

Whether nearly a thousand migrant workers perished on the road or people denied of income are driven to take their lives, New Delhi sadly remains in a state of denial. The country was left in a shock when during the monsoon session of parliament the minister of state for labour and employment Santosh Gangwar flatly denied government responsibility to compensate the families of migrant workers who died while making brave attempts to walk back home during the Covid-19 induced comprehensive lockdown that began on March 25 and lasted till May end. The official brazenness is on the pretext that the government has no data on such deaths.

The government, which has a large network to collect and process data on almost everything under the sun, has painted itself in a corner on the subject since a volunteer organisation Stranded Workers Action Network (SWAN) says in a report that it had found at least 972 confirmed cases of migrant workers dying on the road because of accidents or starvation till July 4 during various phases of lockdown. There were such deaths even beyond. A part of SWAN report says; “Sixteen migrant workers were run over by a cargo train while they were asleep on the railway track on their walk back home, 47 died of exhaustion on their 1,000 km trek because they had no food and water, 96 workers died in their journey aboard Shramik trains. These are just some categories of at least 972 documented non-Covid deaths during the lockdown.”

Who are the people behind SWAN and how did they conduct inquiries to lend credence to the migrant worker death report? They are a band of researchers who assiduously collected data from multiple sources and at the same time considered the data collected by other institutions. A SWAN spokesperson says: “The onus is on the government to verify our figures and then on that basis give compensation. The government may differ on the nature of deaths but it is unfair to brush aside our findings. How compensation could be denied when deaths at regular intervals were reported by the print and electronic media.” Privately, some government officials admit that SWAN mortality figures are at the best conservative. No doubt New Delhi’s impudence on the subject will continue to haunt national conscience for a long time.

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The examples cited in SWAN report all made regular headlines in newspapers and were also major stories in all TV channels leading the states to force the centre to start Shramik trains. How could all this not be enough for the government to collect data and then provide relief to victims’ families? Failed by their own government when they needed support for survival, the country was witness to demonstration of human kindness from individuals and local groups. Sonu Sood is certainly not in the same bracket like the Khan Trio or Akshay Kumar in terms of wealth. But the way he opened his purse to help stranded workers to get back home safely has set a high benchmark for Bollywood and beyond.

There were quite a few occasions when starting from Prime Minister Narendra Modi to some of his cabinet colleagues expressed sympathy for the uncommon privation of migrant workers. Hasn’t Modi talked about the need to provide low cost accommodation to people who travel from one state to another for work on daily wage basis? Isn’t the nation aware of the cabinet decision that migrant workers being largely responsible for construction of houses under the Pradhan MantrI Awas Yojana, they should be given access to the ‘affordable rental housing complexes’ to relieve their distress? How could a government that wants to appear caring deny compensation to families of dead migrant workers whose cause of death in the first place was because of the sudden declaration of lockdown on March 24 to take effect from the next day?

Nobody gave a thought as to how the workers who would get stranded without income by the suddenness of the act would make it to their homes hundreds of miles away safely. Lockdown decision must have been preceded by many rounds of discussions at different levels in the government, including the prime minister’s office. Sadly, it didn’t occur to the powers that be that withdrawal of train and long distance bus services would leave thousands of laid off migrant daily wage earners stranded. It was no big challenge for the government to arrange the safe passage of this community which plays an important role in the economy by arranging special trains and bus services for their journey back home. A major human disaster then could have been avoided.

How many people in India undertake inter-state travel (principally from rural India to cities) for making a living to fall in the category of migrant workers? The 2017 Economic Survey that has a chapter on ‘India on the move and churning: New evidence’ found inter-state migration at 60 million by using a novel cohort-based migration metric and railway data.

WATCH: ‘No Money, No Food, No Work’

If the migrant workers within the country were denied a caring hand of the government, a large number of Indians who went to work in the Gulf countries fell victims to wage theft by employers there. Many Indians working as masons, electricians and drivers were not only peremptorily dismissed by their employers following the outbreak of Covid-19 pandemic but they were denied most of their legal dues not to speak of any compensation on humanitarian ground. Our diplomatic missions in West Asia have been found wanting in taking up their cases with the host governments to the dismay of migrant workers. Once we are back to normal economic activity, New Delhi will do well to consider the suggestion of Shashi Tharoor, MP from Kerala, that an escrow fund be set up which will require of the employer to deposit wages for six months on visa approval of workers. Such a fund will prove useful for workers in future crisis situations.

Time for New Delhi to sit up and use its diplomatic levers to ensure the wellbeing of over 8 million Indians working in West Asia, the majority of them being in the United Arab Emirates and Saudi Arabia. This community is responsible for remitting over $50 billion back to India every year. The World Bank now makes the ominous forecast of at least a 23 per cent fall in such remittances this year. It cannot be otherwise. The International Labour Organisation said in a report in May that an estimated 6 million jobs will be lost in the Arab region and the principal victims of jobs shrinkage will be migrant workers who are mostly from India, Bangladesh and Pakistan.

India is not only a major supplier of labour to the Gulf, but over the years a large number of Indian professionals from doctors to engineers and from bankers to IT specialists have done well for themselves in that region. No wonder India happens to be the world’s top recipient of money transfers by expatriates in different parts of the world. Remittances to India in 2019 amounted to $83 billion exceeding foreign direct investment by $32 billion. As oil revenues have shrunk and other businesses are doing badly in Saudi Arabia and elsewhere in West Asia, managements across the board are targeting foreigners first when they go for job cuts.

Kerala, which always has topped the list of Indian states in terms of locals going to the Gulf to seek fortune, is now seeing the largest number of returnees. The southern state always has the largest share of remittances to India. The challenge for the Left Front government in Kerala with already high unemployment rate will be to ensure meaningful rehabilitation of the people returning from the Gulf with little chances of their finding overseas employment anytime soon.

Migrant Crisis Will Haunt Modi Govt 2.0

By Anita Katyal

The first anniversary of second term of the Modi Government will be characterised forever with images of poor migrant workers left struggling as if refugees walking aimlessly in a war zone, even reminiscent of pictures from the Partition. There are comparisons with Trump as self-adulation now deflated by events gives way to venting false anger against the states trying to cope with the Centre’s poor handling of the Corona Pandemic.

The unending exodus of penniless migrant workers triggered by the corona lockdown has cast a long dark shadow over the Modi government as it completed one year of its second term in office on May 30. This should have been a grandstanding of glorious achievements attained against apparent great odds with self-congratulatory speeches. It has turned into a media exposure of its shortcomings.

Though Modi and his ministers marked the occasion by flooding major newspapers with lengthy columns detailing the government’s key decisions over the past year, they could not get away from recurring reports and images of lakhs of stranded migrant workers struggling and trekking thousands of kilometres with little or no food and money to reach the safety of their homes. Their little children in tow or being carried. It is an image of a country still in the underdeveloped stratus of economies. But India is the fifth largest economy in the world!

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The Modi government has reason to be perturbed by these reports as they reflect poorly on its handling of this humanitarian crisis.  It is obvious that the Centre failed to anticipate the rush of migrants when the Prime Minister declared the first nationwide lockdown on March 24 at four hours’ notice. It was a failure of foresight. Worse, the Government remained in denial about the plight of the migrants for nearly two months after the lockdown was first imposed. 

Why four-hour notice? Not even the world’s most advanced countries would have had the courage to attempt such an ambitious clear out of the streets. In India, where millions sleep in the streets and hundreds of millions live in dire poverty living from day to day on available labour, away from family and home, this was a decision of astounding daring and unexplainable rationality.

For days those who had grown to gain some confidence in the government’s handling of the pandemic suddenly wondered where is the planning, when they saw pictures of poor straddling to nowhere land. Surely the Modi Sarkar must have commandeered the great network of national and public transport at no costs barred to take migrants to safer places with safe physical distancing. Nothing.

This transpired to be another notebandhi type decision without any planning, without any infrastructure in place and with little regard to the poorest. They suffered the most then and they suffered most in this apparent show of strongman Modi. But the strong are not meant to hurt the weakest.

VIDEO: ‘No Money, No Food, No Work’

With the government’s image now taking a severe beating, a defensive BJP has played the Trump card and countered charges against it by turning the spotlight on the poor management of the COVID-19 pandemic in opposition-ruled states. The saffron party is at pains to point out that it was actually the state governments that had failed to pass on the money and other benefits announced by “Modiji” to the rightful beneficiaries. So many echoes of America where Trump has blamed the states for the hundred thousand deaths. Trump can also blame China, but Modi cannot blame Pakistan this time.

At the same time, it is running a campaign to publicise the Modi government’ efforts to shore up the economy and focus on the specific relief measures initiated by it to provide succour to migrants, farmers and daily wagers.     

As part of this plan, finance minister Nirmala Sitharaman addressed a series of press conferences to unveil the details of the Rs.20 lakh crore economic package which had been announced earlier by Prime Minister Narendra Modi in his address to the nation. 

This was followed by a string of interviews by Sitharaman to media houses in which she explained the benefits of the stimulus package and responded to critics about its shortcomings. 

Though the government’s package could have been announced at a single press conference, Sitharaman instead chose to phase it out over five days, a PR exercise in itself.

It is obvious as anything. The Prime Minister’s first announcement about the package and the finance minister’s follow-up explanatory media briefings were essentially an exercise in “headline management”, an attempt by the government to divert attention from the heart-breaking media reports about the migrant workers.  

And yet the migrant story refused to go away. 

The Modi government’s initial assessment that the situation would soon settle down came to a naught as there has been no stopping of this exodus and no end to the misery of those forced to make their way home on their own.

Television news channels, newspapers and even international media have been replete with reports about the plight of stranded migrant workers. And how they are cycling, walking on highways, tramping through fields and hitching rides in trucks and tempos in their desperation to get home. Many dying as well from accidents, exhaustion and illness. More than hundred migrants have lost their lives in accidents while undertaking this perilous journey.  

Managing the fall-out of the coronavirus pandemic has exposed the underbelly of the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party. Over the six years it has been in power, the saffron party has finessed the art of messaging and acquired an expertise in setting the political agenda. Events have taken over now. Neither twitter nor an adulating press can hide the scars of a badly planned response to the pandemic. Ordering shutdown was much easier than planning for one.

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But the corona crisis proved to be a rare occasion when the BJP and the Modi government’s strenuous efforts failed to change the narrative in its favour. Realising that the government’s image was continuing to suffer, the Modi government decided to operate Shramik special trains to transport migrant workers to their villages. 

Coming nearly two months after the first lockdown was declared, the operation of special trains is a proverbial case of too little, too late. The inept handling of the travel arrangements only added to the government’s woes. Its decision to bill the migrant workers for their fare home provided fresh ammunition to the government’s critics to mount a fresh attack against it.

As if it did not have enough on its plate, the ensuing war of words between the BJP and opposition made matters worse for the Modi government. Cooperative federalism was forgotten and politics was soon at play in the middle of the greatest threat in modern times.

Unable to cope with the rush of travellers on the special trains, Railway minister Piyush Goyal attempted to turn the tables and blame the chief ministers of opposition-ruled states for not giving their consent to receive the Shramik special trains. 

West Bengal’s Mamata Banerjee was the main target here as the BJP is expanding its footprint in this Eastern state and with assembly elections due next year, the saffron party did not want to pass over this opportunity to show her in poor light. It had earlier buttonholed the Mamata Banerjee government for not following the COVID-19 guidelines and has periodically fielded West Bengal governor Jagdeep Dhankar to needle the chief minister. 

And then there was the unedifying spectacle of Uttar Pradesh chief minister Yogi Adityanath engaging in a war of words with Congress general secretary Priyanka Gandhi Vadra over ferrying migrants from UP to their native villages. The Congress leader wrote to the chief minister, seeking his permission to transport them in the 1,000 buses which had been especially commandeered by the party. 

The Yogi government first said no, then yes and then demanded necessary documentation of the vehicles. This back-and-forth continued for some time and finally ended with the Congress sending back the buses parked for the stranded migrants at the state borders, accusing the Yogi government of indulging in petty politicking.

There is no denying that the migrant crisis has tarred the Modi government’s image. And yet there is little doubt that it will eventually emerge unscathed from this mess thanks to a lacklustre and divided opposition. Unless the opposition comes from a coalition of state parties.

But, for the moment, the government is merely in damage control mode.