When India is emerging as a global giant on economic front, the reverse migration which happened during the lockdown has shown another face of the coin.
Indian workforce mainly unorganized sector labourers who migrate to cities have only one purpose. A better earning and a better life. Today everybody has a bank account, adhaar, mobile and govt support. Despite that they chose to flee the cities to their remote villages. Most of them had money with them but non availability of transport made things difficult for them. Why this happened?
I clearly give below three reasons for that lost purpose of them being in the city.
1. There has been no sense of security to them in cities. Private as well as govt companies employing their services on daily wages basis failed to provide them with any security and a purpose for them to stay. Nobody, I say again nobody thought of them. A 21days lockdown announcement was received as an alarm of loss by these companies and worst they passed this fear to labourers.
2. No proper respectful living quarters exist for these labourers on daily wages. Even a labourer has self respect, they live in these hutment conditions only to earn a living. Day to day basis survival. Their hutments could not provide them with a purpose to stay when the work was not available. Had their labour camps been with facilities and security, they would have stayed. At the same time politicians played dirty in Delhi, by spreading the rumours and inciting more fear. They did so to eat away the money meant for arrangements of labourers in time of emergency.
3. With above two reasons, life of a migrant labourer was deliberately allowed to be made harder without any consideration. Naturally in such times being human, they seeked love and comparative safety of their hometowns and villages.
India has food security now, free education and healthcare to farmost parts. However, their condition in time of emergency has lead to loss of trust and purpose of coming to city.
What has happened is bad. Hopefully, impacts of this will lead to making stringent rules for facilities for migrant labourers.