5.15 lakh migrant workers returned home during second Covid-19 wave; Ministry says migration in first and second waves different

Around 5.15 lakh migrant workers returned to their villages from workplaces during the second wave of Covid-19 in April-May this year compared to at least 1.14 crore witnessed during the first lockdown a year ago, the Ministry of Labour and Employment told a Parliamentary panel as it faced the wrath for its response to dealing with the crisis.

The Ministry was of the view that the migrant workers' movement during the first wave and second wave should not be compared as the circumstances of the lockdowns on the two occasions were "completely different".

When asked by the Parliamentary Standing Committee on Labour headed by BJD MP Bhartruhari Mahtab, the Ministry told the panel that only 5,15,363 migrant workers returned to their home states during the second wave.

No state-specific figures like the one provided for migrant workers returning home in the first wave were provided in the report tabled by the panel in Parliament earlier this month.

It sought to differentiate the migrant workers' return in the first and second waves saying that many of those who returned home during the second wave has returned for seasonal activities like crop cutting, marriage and festivals.

"The nature of localised lockdowns, curfews imposed by the various states, to cover specific areas of state/district/community, as the case may be, during the second wave of Covid-19 in 2021 is completely different from the national lockdown of last year," the report 'Impact of Covid-19 on Rising Unemployment and Loss of Jobs/Livelihoods in Organised and Unorganised Sectors' said.

The report said the Ministry also did not collect the details of migrant workers returning home on its own during the first lockdown in March-May 2020 and had to be goaded by the Supreme Court to do so. The Narendra Modi government had faced criticism over the handling of the migrant workers' crisis.

When the entire nation was "witnessing a heart-rending sight of lakhs of migrant workers walking back to their native places helplessly without anything to fall back on", the panel said it was "surprising that the Ministry waited for as long as two months" until June 2020 to write to states and "that too after goaded" by the apex court to collect details.

"Needless to say, it speaks volumes of the inaction/delayed action on the part of the Ministry at that specific point of never experienced crisis, notwithstanding a number of appreciable and pro-active measures undertaken by the Central Government as well as the State Governments subsequently to provide food, shelter, transport and health facilities to the migrant labours," it said.

The panel said the Ministry should take suo-moto cognizance of such "unprecedented crisis without waiting for the judiciary to intervene" and leverage its monitoring and coordination mechanism with the states to provide the much-needed help to the migrant workers and empower them to deal with the pandemic.

The report said that 1,14,30,968 migrant workers had returned home during the lockdown in the first wave with the maximum number of migrant workers who returned to their home states belong to Uttar Pradesh (32.49 lakh ) followed by Bihar (15 lakh), West Bengal (13.84 lakh); Rajasthan (13.08 lakh) and Odisha (8.53 lakh).

Other states which saw large numbers of migrant workers returning home during the first wave lockdown were Madhya Pradesh (7.53 lakh), Jharkhand (5.30 lakh); Chhattisgarh (5.26 lakh) and Punjab (5.15 lakh). Among the southern states, Karnataka saw 1.34 lakh migrant workers returning home while Kerala had 3.11 lakh, Tamil Nadu 72,145, Telangana 37,050 and Andhra Pradesh 32,571. The Union Territory of Lakshadweep saw 456 migrant workers returning home.