Eassy on shut down due to covid 19 effect on workers
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India’s nationwide lockdown amidst the coronavirus pandemic has created a severe dislocation in the lives of its migrant population. Based on their research in Noida, a hotspot of the crisis, Ritanjan Das (University of Portsmouth) and Nilotpal Kumar (Azim Premji University, Bangalore) explain how the pandemic exacerbates the ‘chronic crisis’ in the everyday existence of migrants to unprecedented proportions.
In late March, as India stared at the outbreak of the coronavirus pandemic, Bijay Singh and six other men embarked on a 1,700 km journey from Chennai to their village in West Bengal. They were tribal migrant workers from Bhangidih, a village in the Purulia district, about 350 kilometres from state capital Kolkata. Upon reaching Bhangidih, they quarantined themselves outside the village perimeters. Fearing attacks from elephants, they tied cots with mosquito nets high up on mango and banyan trees, and would only come down for food that their family members left nearby. It took almost a week before the news reached the district administration that then made alternative arrangements.
India is currently in the third week of the 21-day nationwide lock-down amidst the pandemic. On the whole, the outbreak, albeit alarming, has not yet reached critical proportions. At the time of writing, the total number of cases is inching towards 5,000, with 124 reported deaths. Many reports, however, doubt these number, claiming that the test-rate in India is among the lowest in the world. There is fear that India could be weeks away from a major surge in cases which would overwhelm its crippling public health system.
However, despite the government’s announcement of a $22.6 billion stimulus package, the lockdown is a severe crisis for India’s migrant labourers. It is people like Singh, part of an estimated 453.6 million of India’s internal migrants, who are suffering from the worst. With their daily wages having dried up, most of them can barely afford rent or even food in the cities, and are thus left with little choice but to attempt a journey home by any means possible. In what is the greatest exodus since partition, this unprecedented flight of migrants from different parts of the country to their villages, especially from Delhi and the National Capital Region (NCR), has made international headlines. Stories from the ground signal the advent of desperate times. There are reports of workers stuck in informal settlements akin to detention camps, health officials using hosepipes to douse migrant labourers in disinfectant, and people attempting to walk hundreds of kilometres to reach home and even dying en route. As the plight of Singh and his fellow travellers shows, there is also fear and panic that those returning may spread the virus further, especially with authorities resorting to cramming people onto buses and into relief camps and homeless shelters.
Based on our ongoing ethnographic work in Noida – a city in NCR that has now become a hotspot of the pandemic – we propose some further thoughts about this mass exodus despite the government’s promises and instructions to stay at ‘home’.