Migrants are the new untouchables
WHILE REPORTING distress migration from rural areas, I have often come across many migrants making a powerful statement: “We faced distress in cities, but escaped the social regression of the caste system in our villages.” It is not that villages only practice the great Indian genetic caste hierarchy. But the poor who belong to the lower hierarchy suffer the most in villages, where they are taught to inculcate “social distancing” right from their childhood. When they move to cities/towns in search of better livelihoods, they become “the migrants”. Here, they continue to remain poor, but somehow the caste barrier feels “distant”.
As they now return to their villages due to loss of jobs in cities, a new and equally discriminatory type of social distancing awaits them: they are assumed to be carriers of the virus that causes COVID-19, thus, must be kept in that medically prescribed “quarantine”. And this period is being increased—in Odisha, one has to spend 28 days in quarantine. In the last few weeks, there have been widespread reports of villages not allowing their own migrant residents. Even migrants walking to their villages are being vilified on the way, as many villages have stopped them from crossing their geographical area. In Odisha, some people even went to the High Court, which ruled that only COVID-19-free migrants would be allowed into the state. Fortunately, the Supreme Court stayed this order. But in popular imagination, migrants continue to be perceived as carriers of this contagious virus. They are the new untouchables; the new pariahs. And it is no longer a clinical “disease distancing” they have to suffer from, but that of being pronounced a long-term outcast—both physical and social.
Worse, the caste distancing is going to become even more pronounced. This is because socially and economically disadvantaged groups have always been kept out of the developmental bonanza. They have the least landholding; they have the least access to irrigation; and they have the least level of education. Now, having lost their livelihoods in urban areas, they are reentering the old regressive system that perpetuated inequality. Some may argue that the massive relief efforts announced by secular governments could halt caste distances.
But past pandemics have demonstrated that inequality widened in such crises. To begin with, pandemics have always impacted the already poor and marginalised the most. Though some say that the pandemic of 1918 was “social neutral”, but in reality, scientific examinations showed that those who shared rooms/apartments in higher density suffered the most, or died the most. Who are these people who had to share apartments/ rooms? Invariably, they were the migrant workers belonging to the lower economic strata.
The current pandemic is no different. A recent research paper by IMF’s Davide Furceri, Prakash Loungani and Jonathan D Ostry, and, Pietro Pizzuto of Italy’s University of Palermo shows that “the shares of incomes going to the top deciles increases and that to the bottom deciles falls after a pandemic event”. According to their research based on the last five pandemics, “the share of income going to the top two deciles is 46% on average, while the share going to the bottom two deciles is only 6%—a gap of 40 percentage points.” After five years of a pandemic, this gap in inequality in distribution of income increased by 2.5 percentage points.
A poor’s person’s economy depends a lot on interactions with society. The poorer one gets, the more is the dependence on others. So, social distancing is the highest order of economic punishment—those living on the margins will, sadly, fall first.
Past pandemics have demonstrated that inequality widens during such crises