The migrants mess-

We the urban middle/ upper class people have been sitting in our air conditioned sitting rooms and watching on TV day in and day out the terrible gut wrenching sights of the migrant workers trying to get out of the urban ghettos in which they have been forced to lock themselves due to the Corona virus, by walking or on cycles, on top of over crowed buses or trains having no money, no food and no shelter as the landlords have thrown them out of their rented homes. They have been left with no options.

We all watch helplessly. Some of us try to give some help in the form of money or food. Various NGO’s and citizen groups are trying to do whatever they can with their limited resources to help these desperate people who are on the edge of starvation and have nowhere to go , only hope being to reach somehow their homes back in their villages.

None of the governments – central as well as states- had any idea of the huge amount of migration for employment that had taken place during the last years and hence were overwhelmed by the sheer magnitude of the problem after introducing the lockdown ( which of course was necessary to contain the pandemic). They were caught of guard and in the ensuing panic the bureaucratic bungling started. Instead of tackling the logistical challenges on war footing , they started finding ridiculous excuses such as who will pay the cost of tickets etc.

Firstly the migrants should have been given a few days time to go back and in the meantime given some money to survive and reach their destinations. Secondly local administration and political outfits across party lines should have been involved to communicate with these people and distribute the help required so that they would not have to keep running from pillar to post in this scorching summer. Thirdly without getting into the disputes of who should pay for tkts proper schedule of trains and buses should have been arranged and communicated to the migrants.

With little more of planning and compassion a lot of pain and misery to these workers could have been avoided. Also the deaths due to starvations, heat strokes and accidents could have been avoided.

If political leadership was failing where was the bureaucracy? Could’nt they take initiative and arranged help for these poor people? The same babus after passing the administrative entrance exams tell us in TV interviews that they are joining the IAS etc. to serve the people and to serve the nation. The moment they join in they forget it and conduct and act the same way as they used to do in British Raj.-to rule the people by using danda if necessary.

Ultimately Supreme Court had to step in ( as usual ) and give instructions which in normal course any functioning administration would have done in its course of discharge of duties in any crisis. But inspite of SC’s clear instructions nothing much has happened even after two days. Large numbers of migrants are waiting in the scorching sun not knowing when their train will be arriving to take them home.

Another thing that strikes one in this entire tragedy is that the average age of the majority of the migrants which appears to be between 18 to 35 or so. The fact that most of them have migrated all the way from their home state means these must be school drop outs from 4 th standard to 12 th standard. With the kind of education system we have these poor people have been able to acquire neither much knowledge nor any specific skills rendering them not very suitable for any better paying jobs . Whatever they might be doing to earn a living, these skills they must have acquired on the job or working as apprentice with meagre salaries.

Hear goes the “Demographic Dividend” about which we have been boasting for quite sometime now. With total number of migrant workers in the region of 35 crores plus, we have already lost a generation of young Indians to fend for themselves and their families a marginal existence without much hope of coming out of the rut and for no fault of theirs. We were supposed to provide them with quality education and opportunities for development of skills that would have made them highly employable and consequently with adequate earnings. But instead we have left them to remain below poverty line desperately clinging on to the threshold of survival.

With the rapid advent of AI ( artificial intelligence) , machine learning and super fast algorithms , the employment opportunities of unskilled or semiskilled people are going to be further reduced and the numbers of above marginal citizens is going to only swell. Going back home is not going to solve their problems . In fact it is going to get worse as where are the jobs in their hometowns? If there were jobs available there these people would not have rushed to the metros to find work in the first place. Farm activities and MNREGA may absorb a small proportion of these people but the future for most others looks quite bleak. Govts must work out concrete plans for reskilling them and make them employable at the earliest.