The gravest and unimagined situation in which the unprecedented national lock-down has been breached at the outskirts of major cities like Delhi, Mumbai and other industrial stations by the migrant labour and other workforce has posed a greater challenge before the country to face while fighting against the deadliest China-virus (Covid-19).
The situation has hit the Alarm-Bells for each and every one of us and has pressed the panic button for union and state governments to cope with what seems the unimaginable for the resources available.
At the first instance, it seems there was some miss-match in assessing such consequential results when the nation-wide lock-down was announced and enforced. Various state governments though announced that food and financial help would be provided to all the poor wherever they were placed, a categorical and clear message should have given in the announcements itself about the real-time period within which the relief could be reaching to these migrant workforce and also about the eligibility of all without exception of domicile/locality. It is also said that some social media reports have created panic among the poor workers that the lock-down would continue for three months which caused a scaring effect on the psyche and the delay in reaching these people strengthen their apprehensions of starvation.
It is a known fact that well over a hundred million of our rural people are in cities as the primary workforce. They are in every city that has work. These are the daily wage earners, self-employed casual workers, small vendors and service providers who, in the suddenness of lockdowns and sealed borders, will not have the necessities to survive. There isn't enough food or even clean drinking water anywhere. Many of them may also have been evacuated from their living spaces – essentially work sites which shut down upon lockdown orders – and they may not have been paid their due wages on the vague promise of things becoming better. Providing free meals or groceries and vegetables is an absolute first.
Schools, offices, night shelters and public spaces must open for accommodating migrant workers now adrift without safe places to live. While the Centre and State governments announce relief measures, they have been restricted to local populations with identity documents providing domicile status in the city.
Migrants, who are unaccounted for in State and national statistics and consequently fall outside the purview of all State authorities, live in un-recognised settlements or worksites in the city, and cannot prove their eligibility through documentation, need to be taken into cognisance while designing relief measures.
The universalisation of all relief measures, with no eligibility barriers, is an imperative at this hour. Secondly – there's an immediate need to protect wages and ensure that workers are not cheated out of their dues.
Protection of wage denial, fraud and wrongful retrenchments will need more than the power of benevolent suggestion as in the PM's appeal. It will need application of law and delivery of justice through a deft legal response system which needs to be immediately 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 corporate bailouts start getting negotiated – we need to ensure that the delivery of social security measures is not suspended.
Thus to have millions of workers stranded at State borders signals a systemic failure that pushes one of the most vulnerable sections of our population into further indignity and crisis and above all failing of our fight against the spread of China-virus
