Govt’s utter callousness

The opening day of Parliament’s Monsoon Session, held under extraordinary circumstances as the country nears five million Covid-19 cases, made it quite evident why the Narendra Modi government was so keen to avoid answering members’ questions on the floor of the House. In reply to a written question by a BJD member, labour minister Santosh Gangwar said the government had “no data” on how many guest workers had died or were injured on the long trek back home in the lockdown months. While the minister acknowledged over one crore such workers had walked or otherwise travelled to their home states after the nationwide lockdown was imposed with just four hours’ notice, he also said in response to another question that the Centre had no information on how many had lost their jobs, as “no such survey has been conducted by the Centre”. This of course begs the inevitable question: Why not? It is utterly shameful that India’s government could display such a callous, unfeeling attitude towards its own people — the minister could get away with it only because the response was laid on the table of the House, and he didn’t have to face supplementaries afterwards, as would have been inevitable if he was speaking on the floor. Did the government think if it didn’t keep count, the deaths — perhaps in thousands – hadn’t happened?

The mass movement by India’s guest workers, with searing images of people battling the police, sometimes being sprayed with insecticide, often being huddled together in quarantine shelters, was one of the defining global images of Covid-19’s impact. It was possibly the largest migration in India’s history since the 1947 Partition. The entire world saw how people were collapsing on their way home, fighting exhaustion and sheer hunger, with many losing their lives. But the government, in an extraordinary lack of empathy, apparently didn’t feel the need to record these deaths. Was it because it didn’t want to be held responsible, as of course it was, for people losing their lives due to official callousness. Was it because it didn’t want to be liable for compensation? The answers are overdue.