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Written by Anju Agnihotri Chaba | Jalandhar | Updated: May 13, 2020 12:16:01 pm A group of migrants cycling back home. (Express photo by Anju Agnihotri Chaba)

We have been feeding ourselves using money sent from home. At the railway station, police cane ussome even demanded moneyto let us board the train even though our registration was complete 12 days ago. With no way out, we decided to go home on a bicycle. Not sure if we will reach home or die along the way.

As Brij Kishore (21) expresses his fear and helplessness at Punjabs Phagwara, he had already travelled 150 km, with nearly 1,500 km yet to cover to reach his home in Bathani Tola village of Bihars Bhojpur district.

Kishore, who worked at a thread mill in Amritsar district and was part of a group of over 29 migrants on cycles, said, My father borrowed and sent Rs 1,000. I used Rs 800 to buy a second-hand bicycle. I have been riding for the past three days and it will take 12 more days to reach my village. Our feet are badly swollen

Santosh Kumar arrived in Phagwara from Hoshiarpurs Tanda town in a group of 100 migrants on bicycles on their way to Bihar.

No trains are being run from our district. We are not even aware whether they would run We walk 10 km daily to the DC office to enquire about the train, and the police send us back to our rooms without any clarification. Now we are going home on cycles, said Santosh, who left Hoshiarpurs Tanda town on Tuesday morning.

While Shramik trains have been running from Jalandhar and Amritsar districts for over a week, migrants from all eight districts of Doaba and Majha regions were found walking and cycling to their homes in UP, Bihar, and Jharkhand in large groups.

The entire stretch from Kartarpur in Jalandhar to Phagwara was full of such migrants on Tuesday.

Whatever we had with us here is finished Our families back home had been supporting us by sending money. So is it not better to go back rather than asking them to send money, said Vikas, another migrant who left Beas in Amritsar for his home.

Ram Nivasan from Bihars Saharsa district said, When no one is telling us anything with clarity, how long can we wait here in uncertainty? no one was helping us, so we started our long journey to home.

Police caned me when I went to the railway station to enquire about the train from Hoshiarpur. After such treatment, I decided to start on my own, said Bholu Ram, who came to Punjab to work as a construction labourer.

The allegation of money being demanded to let migrants board the trains was brought up by another worker from Amritsar. We went to the railway station after getting a message and there they are demanding Rs 500 to Rs 700 to board the train. We dont have even a single penny said Amrish Sahu, who reached Phagwara, cycling to Bihar from Amritsar.

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Migrant crisis: Not sure if well reach home or die on way - The Indian Express

A migrant woman and her daughter lost their lives in a road accident while heading home under the lockdown. The image of the mangled auto in which they were travelling has found its way to social media, yet again putting the focus on the plight of the migrant labourers in India who are desperate to get home. I would rather die of the virus at home than die in a place I dont know, is what you hear migrants say. A painful reminder of how desperate the situation is. At the centre of the migrant crisis are heartbreaking stories with women, especially young mothers at their centre. Heres looking at some images of migrant women battling distance, heat, lack of amenities and braving a lockdown, in their bid to get back home.

A woman with her six-year-old daughter who was a part of a group travelling from Maharashtra to Jaunpur in Eastern Uttar Pradesh died in an accident. As reported by NDTV, they had travelled 1,300 km in an auto-rickshaw for three days, when they were hit by a truck, in Fatehpur UP, just 230 km away from their hometown.

In another incident, a speeding car in Haryana killed a migrant worker from Bihar and injured one more. Another migrant, cycling home was killed in Rae Bareli.

An SUV hit two migrants who were walking ona road at Ambala Cantt in Haryana. One of them died on the spot while the other has been severely injured. Two migrants were also killed on their way home when the truck they had taken a ride in overturned in Gorakhpur district.

Also Read:Migrant Workers On The Move: Harsh Reality Of COVID-19 Lockdown

Even though the government has launched trains, those on the move are now not able to access those facilities. They are walking. Some are walking alone. Some with children on their heads.This image showing a woman carrying her two kids on her shoulders went viral and it really did send out a loud message of this crisis especially on mothers day. It again highlights the plight of the underprivileged lot. They do not have enough food or means to survive in these urban areas. But they also do not have the means to reach their homes safely.

In whats a powerful picture of the misery of families and workers trying to get home, this tweet by Rashmi Tiwari shows a group struggling to climb a truck with a baby hanging along its father (whose bones show as he musters all energy to latch on the rope) and mothers trying to find room to get for themselves. Could we have stopped this situation to come, Rashmi asks while sharing this.

In another incident,a group of 20 people was seen walking from Ghansoli in Navi Mumbai to their village in Buldhana in Maharashtra, a journey of over 480 km. The group included a 7-month pregnant woman.

I sit once in a while, said Nikita, the pregnant woman, as she walked on the road wearing a saree. The woman, who started her walk at 7 pm yesterday, said she had been on the road for the last 12 hours. A young man walked behind her, carrying their belongings on his head.

What will we do staying here? There are no arrangements here for our food and water, she told NDTV.

A migrant worker Shakuntala risked walking a distance of 1,000km -fromNashik to Satna, in the ninth month of her pregnancy. The woman gave birth to the baby on the roadside, rested for an hour and continued the journey with her newborn. A woman needs weeks to recover after childbirth, but, as the Times of India report says, helplessness forced the woman to walk over 200 km soon after giving birth to a baby. She is a hero indeed but its so tragic she was forced to be in this situation. A failure of our nation to address this migrant crisis, these stories of apathy and crisis outcome are heart wrenching.

Several people and even some news channels were seen talking about how these incidents defy social distancing and the rules of the lockdown. But how can we fail to notice the misery and helplessness of these people? As a young woman in 21st century India I ask myself where is our empathy? What else are these people supposed to do to survive? For the political parties, fighting over the credit and money of these peoples train tickets, this is merely an issue. They see their political gains and that who gets the credits. I feel every migrant worker who dies in such accidents, to news and politics it just might be a number to use in their mentions. As a young woman this lockdown has been so significant in my understanding of our worlds and how we are so tremendously disconnected.

I havent been able to get this out of my head. 14 men were mowed down on a railway track, with Rotis strewn all over the railway track. Dead because they were so tired that they slept on the tracks. Why are some lives more equal than others? These are some questions we need to ask ourselves. And those sitting in power.

Also Read:Bengaluru: A Dentist Helps Migrant Worker Deliver Baby

Ayushi Aggarwal is an intern at SheThePeople.TV

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At the centre of Indias migrant crisis are mothers & young children, hungry and desperate to reach home - SheThePeople

Written by Radhika Jha | Updated: May 12, 2020 9:10:14 am Migrants very often travels from poorer parts of the country to different states in order to earn an income, and have come to be known as migrant workers.

India witnessed a tragic irony last week when 16 migrants, part of a group of 20 headed towards their villages in Madhya Pradesh and who were hoping to board a Shramik Special train, chose to rest on the rail tracks: They were run over by a goods train in Maharashtras Aurangabad district.

Ever since the lockdown was enforced on March 25, there has been ever-increasing uncertainty about the welfare, if not the basic survival, of the vulnerable sections of the society, many of whom depend on daily wages for their sustenance. This section of the population very often travels from poorer parts of the country to different states in order to earn an income, and have come to be known as migrant workers.

Opinion | Need a plan to help migrants

Right before the pandemic hit, the political discussion in our country was around the issue of illegal immigrants. There were protests in Delhi and elsewhere against the recently passed Citizenship (Amendment) Act, 2019, which provides citizenship to illegal immigrants who are Hindu, Sikh, Jain, Parsi, Buddhist, and Christian from Afghanistan, Bangladesh and Pakistan, and who entered India before 2014. Now, in an almost dystopian twist, the debate is around the living conditions of the migrant workers amid the strict lockdown. Articles in newspapers suggest that the migrants have been betrayed. But have they, really? Even a bare glimpse at the treatment doled out to the migrants in the recent past shows that this is how they have always been treated. The current apathy of the states and the Centre shouldnt come as a surprise to anyone.

While in countries like the USA, people are pushing for better living conditions for migrant workers which in their context would refer to immigrants, or people who have travelled abroad from less developed countries to the US in India we have been unable to provide a basic security net to even fellow Indians. Here, being Indian is not qualification enough to be considered as your own. From the Marathi manoos movement in Mumbai from the 1960s onwards to the 2012 exodus from Bengaluru of people from the Northeast, there are innumerable examples of the hatred and intolerance displayed by localites towards migrants. Here, there are several boxes that one must check to be included by locals of caste, class, religion and region none of which fall in favour of the so-called migrant workers, unfortunately.

Opinion | Can the migrant crisis lead to a breakdown of the society as we know it?

It would be unfair to put the entire blame on the government alone. If a government is a reflection of its society, then the current response of the government is only an indication of the position occupied by migrants in society. In a survey carried out by Common Cause and Centre for Study of Developing Societies (CSDS), the Status of Policing in India Report (SPIR) 2018, with common people across 22 Indian states, 16 per cent of the respondents said that the police discriminates against people from another state. People in the cities were more likely to feel that the police discriminates against migrants, with 21 per cent respondents from cities agreeing with the statement. On the contrary, SPIR 2019, which was a survey with the police personnel across 21 Indian states, found that 24 per cent of police personnel strongly believe that migrants are naturally prone to committing crimes, while 36 per cent felt that they are somewhat naturally prone to committing crimes. In total, nearly 60 per cent of the police personnel held the opinion that migrants are naturally prone to committing crimes, in other words, they are born criminals. What this indicates is that even though the people, overall, may not to a large extent feel that the police is discriminatory towards migrants, the police, when asked a direct question, did indeed display a discriminatory attitude against migrants.

According to the 2001 Census estimates figures which are nearly two decades old there were 41 million migrants from other states in India. Yet, the percentage of inter-state migration in India is low compared to several other countries. A cross-country comparison of internal migration rates between 2000 and 2010 across 80 countries ranks India in the last place in terms of the rate of migration. While it has been established through several studies that migrants help improve the economic conditions of both the source as well as the destination, in India, there appears to be a conscious policy restriction which deters inter-state migration. A comparative analysis of seven states on migration-friendly policies, compiled in the Interstate Migration Policy Index (IMPEX) 2019, ranks popular migrant-receiving states on policy indicators pertaining to health and sanitation, housing, social benefits, identity and registration, political participation, childrens rights, education and labour markets. Of the seven states studied, Kerala ranks the highest, while Delhi ranks the lowest. However, even in Kerala, considerable improvement is needed, particularly in areas such as political inclusion and non-discriminatory access to housing, the study notes. The lack of policy measures to ensure the welfare of migrants coupled with discriminatory policies surface in the form of much lower rates of inter-state migrants compared to intra-state migrants (or migration within a state). A 2018 World Bank study found that households with some form of identification proof were less likely to have a household member migrate across states, thus suggesting that inadequate portability of identification documents for social welfare benefits deters households from sending migrants across states.

What remains, then, are poorly urbanised states with high levels of inequality and discrimination. Despite the high level of dependency on these very workers, first we disenfranchise them from coming into our cities and towns. And then, in times of crisis, we do not let them return home. While the states and the Centre bicker over who will bear the cost of the train rides for the migrants, the workers will continue to take the journey of hundreds of kilometres on foot, and will continue to die. And we, as a society, will continue to not care.

The writer is a research executive at Common Cause. Views expressed are personal.

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Migrants vulnerability is newly visible, but not new - The Indian Express

New Delhi: As Prime Minister Narendra Modi is all set to address the nation at 8 PM today, media reports suggested that he may speak on the crisis of thousands of migrants who are on the move across the country. Also Read - Ahead of PM Modi's Address to Nation at 8 PM, Did Aviation Ministry Hint at Resuming Domestic Flights?

At this time of corona crisis, these migrant workers are desperate to reach their home after losing their jobs and payment during the lockdown. They are trying to reach their home either by walking, cycling or hitching rides on trucks or even riding autorickshaws. On the way, many of them have lost their lives in accidents or due to hunger and exhaustion. Also Read - Lockdown 4.0: Twitter Is Ready With Memes & Jokes Before PM Modi's Address to The Nation

Meanwhile, the Central government has arranged Special Shramik Trains for their movement during the lockdown. Also Read - PM Modi to Address Nation Today at 8 PM: When And Where to Watch Live Streaming?

During his interaction with the chief ministers, PM Modi had on Monday said the movement of migrant workers would impact states. He said that it is human nature to go home at a critical time like this.

Apart from migrants issue, PM Modi is also likely to speak on issues related to the lockdown and the economy of the country.

A day after addressing the chief minister of all states and UTs, PM Modi will address the nation at 8 PM on Tuesday to discuss the road ahead after May 17, when the nationwide lockdown will end.

However, this will be PM Modis fifth address since he announced the lockdown in late March to slow the spread of the highly infectious COVID-19.

In his March 19 address, PM Modi had announced a jantaa curfew on March 22. On March 24, he announced a 21-day nationwide lockdown. On April 14, he extended the lockdown period till May 3. On April 3, in a video message, PM Modi asked the nation to light lamps for frontline corona warriors on April 5. However, the lockdown was further extended till May 17 by the Home Ministry.

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Migrants Crisis, Lockdown Extension, Economy: Heres What to Expect From PM Modis Address at 8 PM Today - India.com

Representational Image  |  Photo Credit: PTI

New Delhi: Criticising the central government over the migrant crisis, the Congress, here on Sunday, said instead of presiding over the plight of migrant labourers it should use the PM-CARES Fund to help them.

"How much has been collected in the fund? When will it be used? It's time this insensitive government wakes up to the plight of migrant labourers and protect them," said Congress spokesperson Supriya Shrinate addressing the media.

Alleging that the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) was playing petty politics, Shrinate said the Railway Ministry, as well as the Central government, tried to block the assistance provided by the Congress.

She said it was difficult to get permits and NOC online since some states official sites didn't work. In many cases, mobile numbers provided for coordination were found switched off, she alleged.

The Congress leader said no transport was being provided to many, stranded away from big cities, to reach railway stations. "We urge the government to earnestly announce proper rescue and relief measures for migrant labourers," she said.

Stating that in a time of crisis every human being wants to be home, with their families, Shrinate said but the migrant labourers were denied this option. "Most of them had lost their jobs," she said.

Migrant labourers had been the worst hit by the Covid-19 pandemic and its collateral economic ruin, she said.

Excerpt from:
Congress slams Centre over migrant crisis, asks govt to use PM-CARES Fund to help them - Times Now