Plight of migrants in dehumanised South Asia

The idea of South Asia was never too clear, except what the South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation (SAARC) stood for. It was hardly anything more than a few nation-states randomly put together, for strategic and trade interests. A perpetual bone of contention was Pakistan in this comity of nations.

Dramatically, COVID-19 cuts in to reveal the erroneous formulation of South Asia. India’s much-congratulated policy of ‘Neighbourhood First’ becomes yet another diplomatic gimmick in the face of two significant unfoldings during lockdown. Nepal stirs the issue of the disputed landmass in Kalapani in the Himalayas against India’s representation of it as part of the sovereign.

There could be a genuine concern about the dispute. But the way it unfolds is a telling tale. The dispute distracts us from one of the worst human crises, the woeful plight of the migrant workers due to bad governance and absence of a caring state.

It reveals that the nation-states in South Asia are more interested in borders and boundaries than in the people who belong to the place. Moreover, India called for a multi-lateral conversation, a SAARC meeting on COVID-19, in the absence of Pakistan. The nearly-failed meeting became another show of the failure of the nation-state based approach to South Asia.

Merely counting a nation in or out does not make for the region that has innumerable issues of common concern. The common crisis of migrant workers across South Asia was a golden opportunity to humanise our approach. But the strategic interest and flawed policy of ‘Neighbourhood First’ drowned human sigh, anguish and anxiety. The superiority complex of India comes in the way to set right the dehumanisation of South Asia.

Ideally, the nations from the region would have joined hands, learned from one another, and devised efficient ways of handling the social calamity appended to the pandemic. A sense of cross-border compassion was much needed. Instead, they decided to stick to the old rhetoric. The claim to have understood the teeming mass of the workers in formal or informal sectors of the economy in South Asia turned erroneous. Inscrutable policy jargons cannot hide chinks in the armour and we can see the cracks in the states across the region.

One can congratulate Bangladeshi premier Sheikh Hasina to prevent panic during the lockdown. This was not so in India, where, after every announcement of Prime Minister Narendra Modi, there was a mad rush to hoard essential items. In a similar vein, the panicked masses of workers began to throng railway and bus stations exploring the possibility to rush back home to small towns and villages.

Better planning

Seemingly, Bangladesh had better planning about ensuring basics for the most underprivileged and the workers in the cities. Sheikh Hasina appeared more frequently on television and pacified the people without using the dreadful word, lockdown. There is an intuitive thesis doing rounds that the states governed by the female political heads did better pandemic management across the world. This, however, is not the point. The point to note is that India did not look at neighbours to learn and emulate a plan.

When it comes to migrant workers, most of South Asia seems to have failed. Bangladesh did not arrange sufficiently to take care of the utterly disarrayed garment industry, a huge contributor to the employment market there. Many workers walked to and fro, between Dhaka and their respective hometowns and villages hoping to join work.

Seemingly, the issue of migrants is an Achilles’ heel for state across the region. The migrant workers have been variously deemed as the spine of a substantial part of the economy. The engine of growth runs with them as key cogs in the machinery. And yet, unfortunately, they have been perceived only as cogs in the machinery rather than humans with emotion, imperatives and sensibility. This is commonly visible across the region.

Moreover, the workers who were once contributors to the remittance economy became migrants without a nation. Even if they returned, it was only to an ungrateful nation. Nepali workers returning back to their country from India had to endure arduous walk for miles for hours without any care on the way. Bangladesh also failed to plan in advance for the returning workers from afar, like in India and Nepal.

In India, there were arrangements along class lines - there were flights arranged for out-migrants returning from foreign locations. In contrast, there was no time given with any facility of return, for the in-migrants. In Pakistan, though heavily under-reported, it is a not very commendable situation for the workers either.

The real problem is that state leadership across South Asia never perceived workers in relation with society, sentiments and sociability. The workers, be they in the formal or informal sector, were the only embodiment of saleable labour-power. They were not understood as humans with due sentiments, mythology, folklore, culture and everyday life. This was possibly a golden opportunity for yet another kind of South Asia to emerge. In sentiments, we are supposed to inch closer to one another, be equal and able to empathise, and thus be compassionate in our approaches.

(The writer is founding faculty, Department of Sociology, South Asian University)