Decision to allow migrants to return home is welcome

Their health and safety are now the responsibility of the states

More than a month after the nationwide lockdown dried up the sources of livelihood for migrant workers in different parts of the country, the Union home ministry has passed an order allowing the inter-state movement of these workers. The decision to allow them to return home, though belated, is welcome. States have been asked to develop protocols for receiving and sending stranded persons. The onus is now on them to draw plans to facilitate their safe return. A majority of the migrant workers hail from Rajasthan, Uttar Pradesh, Bihar, West Bengal, Jharkhand and Odisha. These states have a varying Covid-19 burden. The local authorities must reach out to the migrants to conduct periodic assessments of their health — as required by the home ministry's guidelines — and the state governments must be ready with quarantine facilities where, if required, they can be isolated in a dignified manner.

The Covid-19 pandemic has bared the precarious existence of at least a 100-million people, many of them migrants, who work in factories, build roads and houses, pull rickshaws and operate the informal economy. In rural India, the MGNREGA, the PM Kisan Yojana and crop insurance schemes provide a semblance of relief during distress. But in cities migrant workers do not have even this modicum of social security. Without social safety nets for such workers, the wheels of the economy could stop turning. That’s one important lesson of this pandemic.