Transporting migrants back home

The Centre should have devised a costsharing plan or taken care of travel costs

Responding to demands from migrant workers, and states, the Union government, on Friday, allowed special trains to enable the movement of migrants to their home states. This was a welcome move.

The decision to transport migrant workers, however, is turning out to be a new flashpoint between the Centre and the states over who will bear the cost of transportation. On Saturday, the Indian Railways said that it is the responsibility of the state authorities to collect ticket fares for stranded migrants and students boarding special trains to return to their hometowns, and hand over the amount to it or pay the amount from its coffers. The service provider is charging sleeper class fares and an additional ~50 for one point-to-point journey. However, there is little clarity over whether states need to book trains, as Jharkhand has done, and pay upfront, or pay later. Left to their own devices, different states are trying out different mechanisms for payments: Either raising money or charging it from poor migrant workers. Given the strain on their own public finances, many have asked the Centre to bear the cost of travel.

The payment controversy could have been avoided if the Centre and the two states (host and home) had formulated a costsharing plan. While all three parties had enough time to do so since the lockdown was announced, the Centre should have taken the lead in formulating this critical cost-sharing plan to ensure that there is no controversy over what is primarily humanitarian assistance to poor and desperate migrant workers. Better still, it should take care of the entire bill.