SURVIVAL SHOTS
The other major initiatives to help the poor
THE FIRST week of the 21-day nationwide lockdown saw images of masses trying to return to their native villages in rural India with their bundled belongings by whatever means of transport they could lay their hands on—overcrowded train tops, bus tops, handcarts, bicycles—or literally laying their feet on the long path back home hundreds of kilometres away. The scenes of outmigration from cities like
Delhi were reminiscent of the
Partition of India and the unprecedented population transfer that followed. The partition migration was triggered by a newly drawn line between two nations whereas the present exodus has highlighted another kind of divide within the country—between the rural and the urban India. There was one more remarkable difference—the sudden lockdown that led to the unanticipated displacement of migrant workers from cities like Delhi and its surrounding areas was meant for saving lives from coronavirus through maximising so-called “social distancing”.
The search for a better life usually motivates a rural-to-urban migration. The question is whether the move has actually provided a life to these migrants any better than what they would have had in rural areas? Now that we are witnessing the opposite trend, this gives us an opportunity to rethink internal migration in India and turn a grim situation into a less dire one, rather somewhat better eventually—both for rural folks and city-dwellers.
The Global Compact for Migration (GCM) agreed upon by most countries in December 2018 has aimed to make migration SOR—safe, orderly and regular. The Compact is meant to apply to international migration across borders, where the responsibility of implementation lies more with the destination countries. However, can we not extrapolate it for internal migration as well? Could there be a pledge to make migration between rural India and the cities “safe, orderly and regular”?
As for the lockdown migration, it was none of these, but there is scope to learn for the future. There can be a rethink followed by a planned strategy to make migration or displacement from urban to rural areas into one which is SOR. Unlike international migration, the responsibility of internal migration would remain within a single country. There are instances of states in the federal structure of India cooperating as allies, not adversaries, while dealing with climate migration. In the present case of coronavirus lockdown, however, some states behaved like they were adversaries of each other and the migrant labourers rushing home were nobody’s babies. Several states have sealed borders to stop urban-rural migration,
there as the hubs in the so far deprived rural and semi-urban areas.
The lockdown wave of migrant workers desperately returning home in their villages throws up a vital question. Why were they so desperate to move out? This is because they do not have the needed retention power to stay back in cities when a crisis strikes—neither physical nor mental. Though the city offers higher wages and migrants earn more in urban areas, the higher income comes at the cost of their health, safety and well-being.
Another question that comes to mind is: “Why has coronavirus been not reported to be as high in villages and rural India as in the cities? Is it because the rural folks have relatively better lungs, unspoilt by polluted air that their counterparts in urban India, both the rich and the poor, have been breathing? Perhaps the respiratory problems related to the weaker and more vulnerable lungs are specific creation of our cities, where clean air has become rare. One unnoticed but major reason for this is the rampant unregulated/illegal construction activity that, fired by human greed, goes on unabated in the garb of renovations in otherwise complete structures in established housing colonies. Previously, the Delhi government had aimed to reschedule the sweeping of its streets so that elders and senior citizens taking their morning walks were not exposed to the clouds of dust. It is not known what happened to that small but imaginative initiative; perhaps it was not insisted upon with the same grit that the present lockdown has been.
It is never early to implement the lessons we have been forced to learn because of the coronavirus crisis. It has readied the people of India to accept drastic changes. Fear of nature’s fury has been greater than that of even the gods as the former has not yet been conquered by corruption whereas fake agents of the latter have ruled the roost! This, in my opinion, is the upside of the present downside.