This story is from April 13, 2021

Pune: Migrants leave in hordes amid fear of uncertainty

The marriage of an acquaintance has provided a perfect excuse to Vijay Kumar (20) and his cousin Amit Kumar (22) to leave the city for good.
Pune: Migrants leave in hordes amid fear of uncertainty
Many migrants await their turn to go home
PUNE: The marriage of an acquaintance has provided a perfect excuse to Vijay Kumar (20) and his cousin Amit Kumar (22) to leave the city for good.
Seated in a corner of the Pune railway station on Monday, the brothers — residents of Jaunpur in Uttar Pradesh — reminisced about their life in the city, “We both came to Pune a year-and-a-half ago for work.
Our employer wanted us to stay on, but we feel going back is a safer option at present. A distant relative of ours is getting married and we decided to attend it. ‘Agar lockdown ho gaya toh phas jeyenge’ (We will get stuck, if lockdown happens). We have promised our employer that we will be back soon, but it seems unlikely,” they said.
It is 1:30pm and the station premises is buzzing with people huddled in big and small groups, waiting for northbound trains. Gloom, fear and insecurity are writ large on their faces as they wait to head home, uncertain of a future ahead of them.
Akash Kumar (18) and his friend stare at the main entrance of the station and check their mobile phones constantly, trying to guage the time left for their trains to arrive. Strangely, just like Vijay and Amit, Akash, too, has a wedding to attend. “We have been working for two years at a factory in Uruli Kanchan. We are going to attend a wedding,” Akash said. However, his friend gives it away. “If the government is bent on creating survival problems, it is better to die in the midst of family members rather than in a different city,” the Allahabad resident said.
A few metres away, Wakil Saroj (36), who hails from Bhadohi in UP, is seated patiently and trying hard not to make any eye contact with other passengers. “I have been living in Pune for 18 years and am a daily wage earner. A month before the lockdown last year, I had gone back to my village due to a family emergency. I was home till December last year and returned to Pune in January. That the state government is considering a lockdown is the biggest nightmare for us. Hence, I have decided to go back home again. I will definitely return, but don’t know when,” Saroj told TOI.

Middle-aged Indrajit Sah, who was listening to the conversation, said, “It was April last year when my brother walked from Pune to Khandwa in Madhya Pradesh (more than 500km) before he could get a transport to Uttar Pradesh. His employer, who lives in Magarpatta area, didn’t pay his one-month salary. Under such circumstances, how do we trust our employers? It is very easy for them to desert us. At my village in Muzaffarnagar, there is hardly any means of employment. But my family lives there. They will ensure that I don’t die of hunger,” Sah said.
A rail official said that each north-bound train was running at full capacity at present. “We have introduced additional special trains to places like Danapur in Patna, Bhagalpur, Gorakhpur, among others, keeping in view the passenger load,” he said.
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