Essay on impact of covid-19 on society
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Answer:
ExplanationImages of hundreds of thousands of Indian migrant workers from several states trudging for miles and miles on highways have been flooding newspapers and television screens for days. Luggage perched on their heads, babies in arms, and elderly struggling alongside, migrants are fleeing en masse to their native villages.
The tragic exodus was triggered by the 21-day lockdown imposed to curb the spread of the novel coronavirus. The journey has been fatal for some. Some migrants have died — at least 22, though the actual count may be much higher. One 39-year-old, who set off on foot from Delhi to his hometown in Madhya Pradesh, collapsed and died after walking around 200 kilometers. He had worked at a restaurant in Delhi that closed due to the spread of COVID-19. Another migrant, who had subsisted on just one meal in two days, told a reporter wryly: “If coronavirus doesn’t kill us, hunger will!”
The Economic Survey of India 2017 estimates that inter-state migration in India was close to 9 million annually between 2011 and 2016, while the 2011 census pegged the total number of internal migrants in the country (accounting for inter- and intra-state movement) at a staggering 139 million, according to a report by the World Economic Forum.
Most of these poor migrants are daily wage workers who are now out of work as businesses and establishments have shut down. In the absence of money and jobs, and bereft of any food, savings, or shelter in large cities, they are desperate to reach their villages. But with railway and bus services suspended amid the lockdown, there were few options other than simply packing up and trying to walk the often-vast distance back home. Many are being sent back from the borders by lathi-wielding cops for violating social distancing norms amid the lockdown. Some have even been sprayed by a toxic bleach disinfectant used to clean buses.
As the humanitarian crisis unfolds, the harrowing plight of migrant workers continues to surface. With the media and civil society raising a hue and cry, buses were finally arranged to take the migrants back to their villages. State governments, meanwhile, are scrambling, often in partnership with local communities, to provide rations and shelter for the now suddenly visible migrants.
But the question to ask is: Isn’t this too little, too late? Why weren’t night shelters, community kitchens, public toilets, and free food – the basics services required of any government – put in place for the poor before the lockdown was announced?
It’s a good question, and one that the Narendra Modi government is fumbling to answer. The mismanagement of the pandemic has also thrown the lid off the desperation that drives the poor to work in the cities. Largely invisible in the census and in national sample surveys — and consequently to administrators — seasonal migrants are a dark and discomfiting reality of urban India.