Defiance, death, disaster lurk behind migrants on move

Defying the ‘stay home keep virus away’ message of Prime Minister Narendra Modi, migrant workers across the length and breadth of the country are on move, unmindful of the huge risks it involves—both from them as well the society at large.

And it is not that they do not have a reason. With no social security in most of those in the unorganised sector and lockdown in industrial units and shops, jobs have gone and so have the wages. Government’s efforts to feed all the poor during lockdown prove to be a drop in the ocean.

And hence, even the threat of being forced into a 14-day quarantine on the borders of their respective home states is not ending the movement of migrants from various cities back to their homes, which is pregnant with the possibility of triggering an explosive spread of the disease.

“The vast majority of infected people are unaware that they are infected because they have not been tested for the presence of coronavirus. With lockdown, they are infecting only the people in their own homes. With the relaxation of lockdown they will infect a large number of people in the community. That will be a disaster. Our health system is not prepared to handle thousands and lakhs of sick people with infection,” says Partha P Majumder, President, Indian Academy of Sciences.

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Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal has appealed with folded hands to people to follow the mantra of “Jo Jahan Hai Wo Wahin Rahe (people should stick to the place where they are) otherwise it will fail anti-coronavirus drive. While Prime Minister Narendra Modi said sorry to the poor for hardships, he made it clear that there was no other option than lockdown. There are police crackdowns. But appeal, apology, action—nothing seem to be quite working and migrant movement continued

K Sujatha Rao, former Secretary, Union Health Ministry told DH, “Lockdown has to be accompanied with aggressive testing of all at-risk cases and identify, threat, isolate and trace contacts to see they do not spread the infection. How devastating it will be, therefore, depends on how effectively we are obeying social distancing and how quickly we can trace the virus and isolate it.”

In Karnataka, 3,000 labourers have reached home from Maharashtra, battling all odds in the streets. In many districts in Uttar Pradesh, busloads of passengers from Delhi reached after UP government on Saturday pressed one thousand buses into service to ply such migrant workers stranded outside their hometown. Far off in Kottayam in Kerala thousands of migrant workers gathered, who wanted to go back to their native homes in West Bengal, Bihar, UP and Chhattisgarh.

Scores of migrant workers were seen negotiating the Yamuna river plane, who wanted to go Kanpur. “If there are no buses, we will go on foot,” one of them said. The river Yamuna connects Delhi and Kanpur. Cops had a tough time in Gurugram in Haryana in convincing a group of moving migrants to stay put.

The stream of migrant workers walking on the national highway and city roads has led to another fatal problem—accidental deaths. Nearly two dozen persons trying to go home in other cities have died in road accidents in different states

“Measures like lockdown need to be followed strictly as any complacency could be disastrous,” says Kalyan Ganguly, senior scientist, Indian Council for Medical Research (ICMR), told DH.

Lav Aggarwal, Joint secretary, Health Ministry says, “we are dealing with an infectious disease and even a slight let-up could bring all our efforts to control COVID-19 to naught.”