29 June 2020, NIICE Commentary 5460
Sutirtha Mazumdar & Avilash Nayak
On 24 March 2020, millions of Indians applauded Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s declaration of the nation-wide lockdown to prevent the spread of the deadly virus, COVID-19. The timely check was appreciated by many, but there was a huge section of the Indian population clueless about what lied ahead – the daily labourers and the unstructured work force primarily. Soon, the struggle for survival and meeting basic means of livelihood started for them and that led to their migration to other prosperous Indian states like Maharashtra, Kerala and New Delhi in hope of a better life.
This led to another set of challenges that threatened the economic, social as well as political governance of the country. This article throws light on the sufferings of the migrant workers in India during the pandemic and the atrocities they face to overcome the myopic plans of the government.
Implications on Migrant Women and Children
On 13 May, the Outlook and the Mumbai Mirror brought to light the plight of Shakuntala, a migrant who was travelling on foot from Maharashtra to Madhya Pradesh gave birth to a baby on the road. After resting for only two hours, she walked 150 km more for medical help. Her heart-wrenching story portrays how the health conditions of these marginalized women are in danger and ought to be prioritised. This is one amongst the many cases that have gone unreported.
This phase is marked by an extremely disequalizing effect and poses a veritable challenge to the spirit of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). The trajectory of social distancing and lockdowns across India makes the gender inequality more prominent as it is signaled by the catastrophic impact on the women workforce. Since they are considered ‘less productive’ and inferior to men, they are highly prone to disposability. The economic downturn accelerates their sufferings due to their greater employment in the non-mobile sectors compared to men. According to National Family Health Survey (NFHS) data, 31 percent of married Indian women have experienced some form of spousal violence. And the situation is likely to worsen in the face of their economic dependability and as they lose their own agency.
“The risks posed by the COVID-19 crisis to children are enormous”, said Jo Becker, children’s rights advocacy director at Human Rights Watch. In context of India, the pandemic has exposed the migrant children to a “situation of double vulnerability” and has stripped them off their rights especially because they are stranded and unaccompanied by their parents. Subsequently, due to their state of homelessness, they are rendered inaccessible to adequate protection and are constantly subjected to increasing risks of violence, abuse and sexual exploitation. Cases of human trafficking, child labour and forced early marriages are also on the rise owing to their state of impoverishment and deprivation which is exacerbated in the wake of the tumultuous times.
The health conditions of the displaced ones are at stake due to their confinement in overcrowded camps, quarantine centres and squatter settlements where treatment amenities, social distancing and hygiene rules are inevitably compromised with. Furthermore the school closures affect them adversely as thousands of children who count on school mid-day meals have to now look for other sources of nutrition. Children forced to travel miles on foot due to the unavailability of proper transport arrangements or the paucity of resources in the poverty-stricken households are facing serious health issues.
Inadequate Strategies to Address their Grievances
As pointed out by the Indian Professor Ramayan Laxminarayan in his interviews to Barkha Dutt and Karan Thapar, children under the age of one are also at risk of being affected; so the government should make extensive arrangements for special health care units, social protection system and accommodation facilities in the orphanages and rehabilitation institutions. To curb any instance of abuse on them, awareness should be spread through campaigns, hotlines, advertisements and other resourceful methods.
Women in the informal sector, are reeling under greater health issues, for instance – in Mumbai’s Dharavi which is a COVID-19 hotspot, coupled with domestic burden, diminished incomes and illiteracy should be also brought under the Employees’ State Insurance Scheme – a health insurance programme for the formal sector working classes. For the economic stability of the home-based and domestic workers, modification of the Labour Codes pertaining to Social Security should be prioritized. As suggested by Shalini Sinha, India’s Representative for Women in Informal Employment: Globalizing and Organizing (WIEGO), to secure the livelihoods of unskilled but “essential” workers and those women working with ASHA and Anganwadi, the government must provide direct cash transfers equal to the monthly minimum wages for a period of at least three months. Another significant step would be the proliferation of Sectoral Worker Welfare Boards like the ones set up in the state of Kerala.
The government announced the nation-wide lockdown with an optimistic point of view not taking into consideration the plight of various unskilled labourers. The World Bank in a report on 22 April stated, “The lockdown in India has impacted the livelihoods of a large proportion of the country’s nearly 40 million internal migrants. Around 50,000-60,000 moved from urban centres to rural areas of origin in the span of a few days”. Following which the bank approved USD 1 billion support “to rebalance social security towards urban poor, as much as rural”. The optimal distribution of those resources is a task in itself.
Need for Timely and Customized Execution
The migrant labourers’ menial jobs in India’s huge metropolises provide the much needed support to power one of the world’s fastest growing economies. The supply chain of consumer goods, essential items and food products are heavily dependent on these workers, who constitute a chief component in the transportation and delivery of products, have been badly hit since they decided to leave the Indian cities. Despite the huge number, proper measures were not taken to provide relief to the migrants and their insecurities forced them to take hasty decisions. Around 25 migrant workers lost their lives and 36 were injured when the truck they were travelling in collided with another one head on in Uttar Pradesh while they were on their way from Rajasthan to their respective hometowns. According to reports by the Wire, apart from the death of 16 migrant workers, who were crushed by a goods train while heading towards their home in Aurangabad, about 383 died due to starvation, exhaustion, suicides, police brutality, denial of medical care, etc.
The central government rolled out an economic stimulus package of INR 20,000,000 millions to revive India’s faltering economy and also help out the migrants from the dire crisis. In a series of press conferences, the Indian Finance Minister Nirmala Sitaraman had announced that 80 million migrant workers from all the states were to receive 5 kg of grains and 1 kg of pulses, free of cost for two months, while 5 million street vendors rendered jobless by the lockdown would be given a working capital loan of Rs 10,000 each. She further announced that the Central Government shall bear INR 35000 million cost of providing free food grains and pulses to migrant workers while the state government would be responsible for its implementation, identification and distribution.
Many of the opposition leaders have questioned the central government’s Atmanirbhar Bharat (self-reliant India) economic package, because of its alleged ineffectiveness in addressing the migrant crisis. Leading economists had estimated that the package totaling up to 10 percent of the Indian GDP was barely 1 percent to 2 percent in terms of an increase in fiscal deficit. The remainder of the package had come from loans, guarantees and Reserve Bank liquidity that did not cost the exchequer much. The government has come under a lot of criticism for providing mostly loans, rather than direct money transfers to businesses and the migrant workers who largely belong to the lower castes of the Indian society.
Nobel laureate Abhijit Banerjee stressed on having a bigger economic package for India and providing direct cash transfer to the poorest of the poor to revive demand and assist in their survival. Many small and medium businesses are on the verge of going bankrupt owing to the prolonged lockdown.
For the upliftment of the distraughted migrant workers holistically, bottoms up approach of economic distribution rather than trickle-down theory should be practiced which seems to be more pragmatic at this juncture. The government should help in reorganizing the MSMEs to generate employment opportunities through schemes like MNREGA etc. This will enable in their overall socio-cultural development and also assist in the mental revival of the labourers whose roles would gain more importance by a multiple times in the post-pandemic landscape. It is time to act on calculated but prompt measures to check the deteriorating conditions.
