There appears to have been a miscommunication on the timing of the train, but at the moment we keep that aside. The more important aspect is that the shelter homes that had been provided for the migrant labourers since the early days of the lockdown have now been shut and the migrants have nowhere to go. Most, if not all of them, have given up the rented accommodations as they were promised a train to their home State and also because they could no longer afford to pay the rent for the dwelling as they have not been earning since March 22, the day of the Janata Curfew. The lockdown from the next day onwards ensured that there was no work for them and so no earnings.
All that occurred in the past weeks of the lockdown and the relaxations that were announced, presented the migrants with a Hobson’s choice – take what is offered or nothing at all. They has no alternative so they took the little offered – a shelter and a ride home. Now, even that has been snatched away from them. The shelters have been shut and the trains stopped. Is this how a government takes care of its own people? Across the world there have been protests over the death of George Floyd in the United States. A Black man killed because a White police officer knelt over his neck for eight long minutes. The resounding cry that is echoing across the world is that Black Lives Matter. Yes they do, and so too do the lives of the migrants in India.
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They do matter, so what is the State doing for them? Goa, should have led by example in meeting the needs of the migrants. The needs are few – food, shelter and the train ride home. Are these basic needs so difficult for the government to meet?
The issue of the migrants returning home has been tackled very badly by the authorities. The government can claim that it has successfully seen many thousands of migrants from Goa reach home to their villages in the various States they come from. This was done, but it has not been easy for the migrants who found themselves orphaned in the early days of the lockdown and suddenly find themselves in a similar situation. Who do these voiceless thousands have to speak for them? Now, there are a few non-government organisations that have been working with the migrants who raise the issues, but it was not so earlier. It is only when thousands of them began trudging back home from the metros that society and the government took notice. Until that time they had been overlooked. Now, the little that was given to them has also been taken away, leaving them at the mercy of nature and a looming monsoon.
Unless the Shramik special trains get back on the tracks and the shelters are reopened, the many migrants who have remained back will face hard days. Jobs for them in the State at the current point of time depends entirely on the economic activity taking off on a large scale. The economic outlook on that scale is not favourable for the immediate future. Goa needs to not just display its humanity, but also put it in practice and here is where it should do it. Hundreds of migrants want that the government and society give them their righful place and treat them equally, it is not too muc to ask.
