Poverty has taken the cruellest of its forms amidst the nationwide lockdown owing to the corona pandemic and the impact of the lockdown is unbearable and crucifying to the poor and migrant labourers.
Lockdown implies a different story for the rich and urban middle class but it is something completely different for the migratory labourers and the poor people who live on a day to day earning, those who thrive on a day’s income to buy food and other basic necessities like fast-moving consumer goods (FMCG). The point is they don’t have a consistent and committed income, they never had it; and that is the precise reason for which, they don’t have and cannot be expected to have savings to meet the exigencies and demands of the present time. Though quite late, but the Indian poor have made their presence felt and registered their protest in between the corona crisis, they have now stood up to say, ‘look, you shouldn’t forget to count on us’.
They are now protesting, in one of such instances, believing a fake news of resumption of outstation trains many poor migrant labourers gathered at Bandra station in Mumbai and used that opportunity to register their protest, some news of protest have also come from Surat.
We have also seen images of many walking hundreds of kilometres to their native. One of such cruel realities is, once the lockdown was declared and inter-State borders were sealed with absolutely no means of transportation, we have witnessed that, in the wee hours of the morning many such migrant labourers have set for their native places, which are miles away. The irony is, they are bereft of the treatment of care and compassion from the cities they have helped build, they are forced to walk along the roads which wouldn’t have been built without their help.
The sudden lockdown has meant that millions of migrants labourers actually had no time to get back to their destinations of optimum security, that is their native home. There cannot be anymore sense of betrayal, than how they have been treated, as in good times the cities have relied on the oceanic workforce drawn from the less privileged parts of the country, which includes job opportunity seeking low-paid/underpaid labourers, taxi drivers, restaurant staff and industrial workers. And this economic storm has made their lives upside down, it has dried their incomes and all prospects of sustaining their minimum living. It shall not be wrong if we put the post lockdown moment of the poor, as ‘a walking exodus’. Chinmay Tumbe, the author of ‘India Moving: A History of Migration’, has compared this situation of, the walking exodus of millions, with something worse than what had happened in 1947 during the bloody partition of the Indian subcontinent.
And the fact in hand is, the Government is sitting on surplus food or food grain, which are rotting and infested with rats and fungus in Food Corporation of India godowns, since there is no demand or market. As per data available in FCI website, it has 3.09 million tons of wheat, 2.75 million tons of rice and 2.87 million tons of paddy which is more than three times of the required ‘buffered stock norms’. And new Rabi crop is coming in, wheat and mustard will be produced in bulk in States like Punjab, which will again be kept in open. As a consequence, they will be destroyed due to various natural circumstances like rain and pests. So it is prudent to let the grains be taken out and given to the poor. And since excess grain is a liability, so instead of just disbursing money, let the duration and quantum of distribution of food grains and pulses be enhanced.
In the meantime, the Government has declared that, everybody in the PDS scheme shall get another 5 kilo of grain and 1 kilo of pulses every month free for 3 months. On this Congress leader Rahul Gandhi has demanded that 10 kilo of grains and 1 kg dal and 1 kg sugar be given through PDS, his demand and the aforesaid reasoning and suggestions actually are stemmed and supported in the strong arguments and suggestions given by eminent economists Amartya Sen, Raghuramm Rajan and Abhijeet Banerjee in their article published in the Indian Express. They have also suggested that the poor who don’t have access to ration card, since it is stuck in some or the other kind of verification process, be issued temporary ration cards with minimum scrutiny.
Food grains alone shall not be able to wipe the tears of the poor, and to address their necessities and concerns, it is necessary to give them some cash. It is learnt that the Government has already decided to remit cash to the accounts of the poor by JAM (Jan Dhan-Aadhaar-Mobile) and Rs 1.75 lakh crore is sanctioned and is being disbursed to “80 crore poorest Indians” under the Pradhan Mantri Garib Kalyan Yojana (PMGKY) over three months starting from April 1. But there is a need to further diversify the mediums, like basing upon the rolls of MNREGA and other social security records, and also it is necessary to make a reality check that, the process is not hindered owing to technical hitch.
We need to understand that, the lockdown is a story that is to run for quite some time now, but that should not be putting life out of the track. It as much important to escape from the fatal traps of corona, as it is essential to keep starvation away, empower the farmers to be able to fetch seed and fertiliser for the next season, replenish the stocks of shopkeepers, to make a whole lot of us to repay our debts and in essence to live and make the civilisation survive the worst tragedy that humanity has faced so far, but this essentially has to be done with compassion and care for the weak, the needy and the poor.
(The writer is a lawyer and public policy expert. He can be reached at sjyotiranjan3@gmail.com)