A 19-year old girl, Lopamudra Neog from Lakhimpur District, Assam studying in Bengaluru, Karnataka died of suicide on Tuesday. While the reasons are not known as yet it can be assumed that the girl might have been depressed on account of the long lockout and her inability to come home. And who knows what other problems she must be carrying on her young shoulders! Many others are going through acute depression and are thankfully being counselled by psychologists/psychiatrists from Meghalaya that are working in Bengaluru. But that’s just one city. There are countless others in Tamilnadu, Goa, Maharashtra, Telangana, Haryana, Delhi et al that are just counting the days when they can return to the safety of their homes. Every day, media personnel receive private messages asking them to plead with the State Government to bring back stranded students, blue-collared workers and professionals working outside the state.
This contingency plan should have been worked out before the national shutdown happened. There was no national emergency that necessitated a sudden lockdown a la Demonetisation which too led to immense sufferings for people across the country. Meghalaya had started the Lockdown on March 20. All those stranded outside should have been given the option to return home if they wished to before declaring that lockdown. Many would have returned paying their own fares without depending on Government patronage as they have to do today. Clearly what’s happening in the country today shows that those taking important decisions are not in touch with the ground realities. The Modi Government’s reliance on bureaucratic wisdom for imposing a national emergency with just three hours notice has had tragic impacts. The bureaucrats in the Home Ministry were not even bothered to work out the maths. They had no idea as to the number of migrant labourers in each state. It led to one of the biggest exodus of people from one state to another many of them doing the journey on foot.
The Indian arm of the Commonwealth Human Rights Initiative (CHRI) based in Delhi, recently asked the Chief Labour Commissioner for the list of migrant labourers in India. The Commission’s office could not provide the figures. The Office of the Chief Labour Commissioner (CLC) under the Union Ministry of Labour and Employment claims, it does not have State-wise and district-wise data despite the CLC directing the Regional Heads based in 20 centres across the country to enumerate every migrant worker stranded due to the lockdown within three days during the second week of April, 2020. This is a new databank that the states should now maintain. Meanwhile the task of bringing back stranded Meghalayans across the country has to begin in right earnest.