A LITTLE TONE-DEAF

While the decision of Railway Minister to run special trains during this crisis is a commendable one, a question emerges as to who these train services are meant to serve? Looking at this announcement with a somewhat critical eye, a few glaring errors in judgment come forth. How will the poor labourers pay the AC fare when they generally travel in unreserved passenger coaches, while they have nothing to eat or drink, given that all their savings have been spent due to the nationwide lockdown. Moreover, how will they install a specific mobile app that requires a smartphone and is necessitated by various states, when most of them don’t know what multimedia or Android phone is? They usually use a basic phone with most of them having their phonesmarts limited to knowing how to call and pick up the phone.

One can check this fact with a plumber, bricklayer or housemaid who works for us regularly. Are all the grounded and wise policymakers in India gone? Have they forgotten their connection with rural and poor India? Have they not seen how the ‘real

India is running on trucks, tractors, lorries and even hundreds of miles on foot without food and water? It’s not exactly a reality one can ignore, given how such news is fast becoming a source of great national shame. Then are those in power willfully ignoring the reality? Looking, perhaps, to wish it away? Perhaps there is a point. Perhaps there is a vision and it doesn’t revolve around poor labourers. But then, one must ask, why not? What individual grouping of people in our country is under greater stress than the migrant workers who have been completely waylaid by the pandemic and the lockdown?

So the government should be sensitive to this issue and take good, considered and above all, ‘tailor-made’ steps for them so that they can reach their homes easily.

..... M SUHAI, KERALA via email