With no bus, food, jobs, migrants make long march to village home

TIMES NEWS NETWORK  27.03.2020

A new humanitarian crisis may be unfolding in the country. Tens of thousands of desperate people, mainly migrant labour reduced to joblessness by the lockdown and with little or no money or food, have been streaming out of major cities for the past few days, attempting foot marches of hundreds of kilometres to reach their homes in India’s small towns and villages. Some were barefoot, and one had handkerchiefs wrapped around his feet and broken slippers stuffed into his pockets in the hope of repair.

These tides of men, and women and children, driven by the uncompromising arithmetic of survival and fear of contracting the novel coronavirus, pose a new challenge to the government’s all-out attempts to contain the spread of Covid-19.

“Some 26,000 people have reached Ratanpur, on the Gujarat-Rajasthan border, in the past two-three days. Our teams are listing them, they are being screened by medical teams. Those who have been advised quarantine are stamped and being transported to their villages on buses arranged by the administration,” Dungarpur collector Kanaram told TOI.

Migrant workers walk back to their villages in New Delhi on Thursday

‘A few organisations have arranged for food and water for migrating workers’

There were thousands leaving the Delhi National Capital Region, trudging down the Yamuna Expressway and the expressway to Meerut. Raj Kumar was one; he had set out for home with just 1,000 in hand. But home was Chhapra in Bihar, 1,050 km away. And he had a toddler in his arms while his wife walked beside him. He was hoping he could hitch a ride home.

Police checkposts on the outskirts of Jaipur, especially along the Jaipur-Agra, Jaipur-Sikar and Jaipur-Ajmer highways, are coming across people walking back to their villages; they had been asked by their families to return home. TOI visited the Jaipur-Agra highway near the Goner road and found many walking on the road, carrying bags and luggage. “My village is nearly 110 km from Jaipur. I have no option but to go back. The police stopped us at a few places but, when convinced that we had no other choice, they let us carry on,” said Kishan Mahawar a daily-wage labourer.

“On Wednesday night we have stopped a truck carrying vegetables and asked the driver to drop five workers to Kishangarh,” said Sultan Singh, a cop posted at Poorani Chungi. The scale of movement is so large that it frightened senior officers at the Jaipur police commissionerate when they were told by subordinates that hundreds of workers were walking towards Transport Nagar.

“A migration is on… We have spoken to many of them who are left without any money. Yesterday we helped some of them reach their villages,” said Jaipur commissioner Anand Srivastav. A few voluntary organisations have arranged for food and water for these migrating workers.

On the Gujarat-Rajasthan border, patwaris were preparing lists of the arriving population according to the areas to which they belong and medical teams have been working day and night screening them. Most of them do not have money and had not eaten properly, Kanaram, the collector, said.

Full report on www.toi.in