ANALYSIS/UTTARAKHAND

prospects of farming in the village. He has removed shrubs from his field and sowed vegetables there. For now, he works under the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (MGNREGA).

“It is better to be in the village considering the situation in cities after the pandemic,” says Bimla’s son Durgesh Juyal, who worked in a construction company in Gurugram. But he is apprehensive about his family’s future. His schoolgoing daughter had started attending online classes after the lockdown. Here, getting education is difficult. The nearest school is 5 km away and there is no public conveyance. Due to the hilly terrain it takes an hour-and-ahalf to reach school and about three hours to return. “Also, there is no work for me here. What will I do?” he wonders.

But 28-year-old Kishan Dev Singh Katyal, who returned to his village Bonga in Pauri’s Kaljikhal block, is optimistic. He had to leave Delhi after Bausch & Lomb, the multinational he worked with, asked him to resign. He was among the hundred employees told to quit. The company was already hit by the economic downturn, but the pandemic was crushing. Katyal now plans to grow mangoes and lychees in his 0.4 ha. “Land is so fertile here that farming can be really profitable,” he says. The problem is that Katyal has nothing apart from his ancestral land. To sustain himself, he has started working under MGNREGA digging pits and picking up stones. He hopes to get government help to start the business.

CAN THE GOVERNMENT HOLD PEOPLE BACK?

The Uttarakhand government is determined not to let its people flee again, says Chief Minister Trivendra Singh Rawat, (see ‘45 per cent of our people will stay back’, “We have launched schemes one after another to turn this disaster into an opportunity,” he told DTE. Under the Mukhyamantri Swarozgar Yojana, people will get 15 to 25 per cent subsidy to start business, be it in manufacturing, agriculture, horticulture or animal husbandry. Loans will be provided through banks. The cabinet has

No. of returning migrants