No Country For Migrants

The lockdown has brought to light the plight of daily wage labourers and the nation’s apathy towards them

- Pooja Sarkar

I slam, a rebel poet of his era, read this verse in 1924 at a peasants’ conference in Krishnanagar on the outskirts of Kolkata. His words ring true even today.

After the government announced a nationwide lockdown on March 24 to prevent the spread of coronavirus, lakhs of migrant labourers and daily wage workers were stranded.

They couldn’t go back to their villages as there was no transport arranged for them. Visuals of hordes of them walking back to their homes, thousands of kilometres away, with children in their arms, brought their plight in the open.

“When the work is over We are but coolies and sailors. And yet when the boat is slink We alone come to pull it out of the mine. We give everything like the sacrificial cow Only to find ourselves neglected now.

Song of the workers (Sramiker Gaan) by Kazi Nazrul Islam

Ram Roop Sahani is among those who’s stuck in Mumbai because of the lockdown. On a scorching Monday afternoon in April end, he and his co-workers are standing in a queue in suburban Mulund to collect food that was being distributed by local residents. Sahani hails from Gorakhpur in Uttar Pradesh (UP) and works at a construction site in the city. On a good day he earns about ₹600 while on other days he makes roughly ₹400 a day. “I don’t have any work because of the lockdown. I have borrowed ₹5,000 from my seth [contractor]… I am waiting for work to start so that I can repay him and go back to my village,” says Sahani, adding that some of his co-workers left for their villages in heavy goods trucks before the lockdown was enforced.