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Sudhir Paswan, 29, is back to square one in his village in Bihars Muzaffarpur district, counting his losses. It has been more than a week since he returned, after failing to secure a job in Delhi.

A labourer who loaded and unloaded goods in Delhis Okhla Industrial Area, he would earn between Rs 200 and Rs 700 a day. Since the lockdown, there was no work and access to food and essentials became difficult. I had to leave the city, he said. Over 8,00,000 migrants left Indias capital, for instance, for their hometowns in 2021. Paswan is just one of them.

Jobs have been hit harder since the lockdowns of 2021, put in place to control the second wave of Covid-19. May has shown double-digit unemployment figures, said Mahesh Vyas, chief executive officer of Centre for Monitoring Indian Economy, a think-tank.

More than 97% of Indias population became poorer compared to where they were in terms of income, he said. Its effect on the informal sector, which had barely recovered from the effect of the first lockdown in 2020, has been debilitating.

Paswan returned home with his wife and their ailing three-year-old son, whose treatment at the All India Institute of Medical Sciences they had to discontinue midway. They had to borrow money from family and friends for their train journey.

Like Paswan, Rabiya (she uses one name), a 35-year-old single mother of three from Kanpur, who has been working in Gurugram, is struggling to make ends meet. She had been earning Rs 7,000 at a facility manufacturing motorcycle parts when work came to a halt with the April 2021 lockdown. She now gets work only if there is a need to clean machine parts at the facility.

Besides job precarity, the migrant workforce is facing another grim reality hunger. Rabiyas ration card to access subsidised foodgrains has not been active since she moved from Uttar Pradesh to the National Capital Region nearly three years ago. I have no family support and need rations to feed my children. It is becoming difficult to get by, she said.

None of the migrant workers IndiaSpend spoke to had ration cards with them their cards were with their families in their villages or hometowns. I left the card with my parents who stay in the village, said Gobardhan Adivasi, a mason from Tikamgrah in Madhya Pradesh, who works in Faridabad. By the time we finish work in the evening, we have to buy dry rations in black because of the lockdown. His contractor owed him money for three days work, he complained.

Every state in India has announced mini-lockdowns or extended them to curb the rise of record infections in the country. The current lockdowns have been tougher for migrant workers compared to last years all-India lockdown, workers in Delhi-NCR told IndiaSpend months of unemployment in 2020 had left them with little or no savings, and now jobs are scarce and living costs have rocketed.

The number of Indians reporting less than the national floor-level minimum wage of Rs 375 increased by 23 crore due to the pandemic. The Stranded Workers Action Network, with a presence across the country, has been running a helpline to support stranded migrants since March 2020.

Nearly 58% of the roughly 5,000 workers who called the helpline, for whom data were available, said their families had less than two days of ration left. More than half said they had less than Rs 100 in their pockets, according to the networks analysis.

As India reports a record number of Covid-19 cases and deaths, the migrant crisis has continued. The story is the same across the country of workers struggling to return to their home states, their inability to access adequate and often basic food essentials in cities where they work and coping with a fall in income, activists and researchers told IndiaSpend.

I am trying to get work, but there are no jobs, said Rakesh (he uses one name), 29, a migrant from Bihar who has been a construction worker in Delhi. Before the lockdown, he would earn Rs 350 a day. Job losses and the struggle to recover them were more for younger workers, and women, IndiaSpend reported in January.

Although employment rates recovered, the quality of employment deteriorated, with individuals moving into less secure self-employment in agriculture, construction and small-scale trade, the report had noted.

Rakesh rents a room for Rs 3,200 a month for his family of four. NGOs have been helping him buy food supplies. But the situation is not tenable. I did not go back during the national lockdown last year because I had some savings. This time when I want to go back home, I do not have any money to buy train tickets.

Migrant workers have been left to fend for themselves more during this lockdown than last year, Shreya Ghosh, an activist with the pan-India Migrant Workers Solidarity Network, told IndiaSpend. Unlike last year when there were trains and relief measures, workers seem to be left on their own despite Supreme Court orders to ensure support for them, she added.

Last time there were Shramik trains, but this time there is nothing of that nature, said Benoy Peter, executive director of Centre for Migration and Inclusive Development, a Kerala-based non-profit. Many migrants went back with their families but returned alone because of the fear of disease and lack of relief measures.

On May 20, 93% of 221 workers in NCR who called Stranded Workers Action Networks helpline (1,260 migrants and families) reported that both daily and contractual work has stopped due to locally declared lockdowns, 59% of workers said they had not received their full wages for the previous month and only 9% had received any money from their employer since the work had stopped.

Indias labour force participation that is, the number of people working or looking for employment shrank by 11 lakh in April to 42.46 crore compared to 42.58 crore in March, according to a May 10 CMIE report. In spite of this smaller labour force looking for employment, a greater proportion failed to find employment [in these two months], it said. The unemployment rate increased by 1.5 percentage points to 8% over the month in April, said the report.

With lesser work available since the national lockdown, workers savings have been depleted, said Ghosh. They were paying back debt from the last lockdown, which also included a backlog of rent.

The impact of the second wave is likely to be more serious because people have not yet recovered from the first waves impact, scholars at the Centre for Sustainable Employment believe. This is cause for concern. The Indian middle class was estimated to have shrunk by 3.2 crore in 2020 as a consequence of the pandemic-related economic slowdown, a Pew Research Center analysis of March had found.

Unfortunately, its lessons have not been learnt, Rajendran Narayanan, economist, Azim Premji University told IndiaSpend, recalling the widespread distress witnessed due to the national lockdown. Government accountability is central for a rights-based approach to work, and shying away due to lack of administrative capacity is at odds with the stated objective of developing a rights-based approach, he added.

Last year we got some cash and rations from some NGOs and friends, said Paswan. But this time I could not get any support from them or from the government. People who hold permanent jobs can still earn even if there is a lockdown, but a daily wage earner like him cannot, he added.

Migrant welfare groups such as Stranded Workers Action Network and Migrant Workers Solidarity Network had written to the Centre and the state governments warning of food insecurity and demanding that they ensure rations for migrants including those who do not have public distribution system cards or ration cards, as per May 13 and May 24 Supreme Court orders. The Court asked states to file affidavits, indicating the mechanism by which the dry rations should be distributed to those migrant workers, who do not possess a ration card.

Migrant Workers Solidarity Network has received requests from more than 4,600 workers and their families asking for immediate and urgent supply of rations, according to its May 24 letter to the Delhi government. For nearly one-and-a-half months, no measures have been taken to address the migrant crisis, it added.

Both Rabiya of Gururgram and Rakesh of Delhi are managing with a bare minimum of food. These days, we eat aloo bhujiya or some potato dish or the other. We used to give our infant Cerelac, but we now just about manage to give him some milk, Rakesh said. Rabiya spends Rs 2,000 on rent and Rs 3,000 on food. She has debts to pay.

In May 2020, the Centre announced a Rs 1.7-lakh-crore Pradhan Mantri Garib Kalyan Yojana relief package for the poor. This included free rations for beneficiaries under the National Food Security Act, which was extended until November. On April 23, the Centre approved an allocation of additional foodgrain for beneficiaries under the National Food Security Act for May and June.

The first wave saw some relief measures from the central government in the form of Pradhan Mantri Garib Kalyan Yojana, which was a combination of provisions, subsidies, and cash transfers, said Chitra Rawat, research assistant at India Migration Now. The second wave, on the other hand, has not seen targeted interventions towards migrant workers.

On May 18, Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal announced that rations would be distributed even without ration cards. Although the government announced guidelines for the distribution of rations for those without cards, it did not announce when the distribution would start.

The initial procurement and allocation will be made for 2,00,000 beneficiaries, it said. The guideline has estimated a procurement for upto 20 lakh probable beneficiaries. In 2020, nearly 70 lakh non-PDS beneficiaries were given free rations by the state government following the national lockdown.

We do not know how that will be allocated, it seems to be on a first-come-first-serve basis, said Ghosh of Migrant Workers Solidarity Network. There is apprehension over the rollout since the total number of non-ration cardholders in Delhi is clearly way higher by the governments own estimates, she added.

Government policies on migration will only make a difference if implemented on the ground, said Peter of Centre for Migration and Inclusive Development, adding that NITI Aayogs draft national policy on migrant workers is still not in the public domain.

In May 2020, the Centre had announced that it would achieve 100% national portability of the public distribution system by March. But the benefits of national portability are likely to be small. Most people want their food rations where they live, and not far away, said Jean Dreze, economist and social activist, in June 2020. Even migrant workers will generally prefer that their ration cards be used by their families at home rather than for themselves.

Portability is a problem, said Seema Mundoli, a Stranded Workers Action Network volunteer in Karnataka. When they approach a PDS shop, they are unable to access rations. Many migrant workers are single men and their names may be on their parents cards, she added. The Karnataka government announced a Rs 1,250-crore relief package in May for farmers, workers from the unorganised sector, auto and cab drivers and street vendors, and is considering a second one to help the unorganised sector.

It is now certain that the health crisis will be followed by a livelihood crisis, especially for migrant workers, said Rawat.

The Right to Food campaign had demanded an immediate universalisation of the PDS of foodgrains, distribution of additional 5 kg of foodgrains per person, 1.5 kg of pulses and 800 gm cooking oil under the PDS for at least six months. Narayanan agreed that the PDS must be universalised. A wage compensation of Rs 7,000 per month for four months for every poor household must be immediately announced, he added.

This article first appeared on IndiaSpend, a data-driven and public-interest journalism non-profit.

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Second wave of Covid-19 has left migrant workers in India with no savings and few job opportunities - Scroll.in

The bodies of three children who apparently were among Europe-bound migrants drowned in the Mediterranean Sea off Libya have washed ashore in the North African country.

UN childrens agency UNICEF said on Monday the bodies were found last week near the coastal town of Zuwara, over 100km west of the capital Tripoli.

Among them were a six-month-old child and a three-year-old child, it said.

Too many children are needlessly losing their lives in deadly migration routes as they search for safety and better life, it said.

NGO Open Arms founder Oscar Camps said the deaths left him shocked.

I am still in shock from the horror of the situation, young children and women who only had dreams and ambitions to live, he said on Twitter.

They have been abandoned for more than three days on a beach in (Zuwara, Libya).

Nobody cares about them.

There has been a recent spike in crossings and attempted crossings from Libya to Europe, with smugglers taking advantage of the calm sea and warm weather.

UNICEF said more than 9650 migrants and refugees, including over 480 children, were intercepted and returned to Libya so far this year, an increase of 91 per cent among children from the same period in 2020.

Earlier this month at least 10 bodies of migrants washed up in western Libya after two shipwrecks resulted in the presumed drowning of about 30 people.

An additional 70 migrants are presumed dead from two other shipwrecks off Tunisia in May.

UNICEF estimated more than 632 people, including children, have died attempting to cross the sea from Libya this year.

Libya has in recent years emerged as the dominant transit point for migrants fleeing war and poverty in Africa and the Middle East.

The oil-rich country plunged into chaos following a NATO-backed uprising that toppled and killed longtime ruler Moammar Gadhafi in 2011.

In recent years, the European Union has partnered with Libyas coast guard and other local groups to stem the dangerous Libya-Italy crossings.

Rights groups, however, says those policies leave migrants at the mercy of armed groups in squalid detentions centres rife with abuses.

See the article here:
Anguish as bodies of baby and three-year-old child wash up on Libyan beach amid growing migrant crisis - 7NEWS.com.au

Over the past decade, the Sicilian fishing town of Mazara del Vallo has had a front-row seat to witness escalating EU efforts to curb migration across the Mediterranean, but its fishermen have paid their own high price for Europes strategy and its dealings with Libya.

Mazaras fishermen have rescued thousands of asylum seekers and migrants in distress. They have also been targeted by the Libyan Coast Guard for fishing in waters that Libya considers its own.

Pietro Russo, a 66-year-old fisherman from the town, has been sailing the central Mediterranean since he was 17. Even we, as EU citizens, have experienced the brutality of the Libyan Coast Guard on our own skin, so we know what migrants desperate to leave Libyan prisons feel, Russo told The New Humanitarian.

2021 is shaping up to be the deadliest year in the central Mediterranean since 2017. At least 640 people have drowned or gone missing following shipwrecks, and more than 14,000 asylum seekers and migrants have reached Italy a ratio of one death for about every 22 people who survive the crossing.

In comparison, around 1,430 people had died or disappeared in the central Mediterranean by the end of May 2017, and more than 60,000 had arrived in Italy a ratio of 1 death for every 42 arrivals.

This year, more than 8,500 asylum seekers have also been intercepted by the EU-backed Libyan Coast Guard and returned to detention centres in Libya, European navies have largely withdrawn from search and rescue activities, and NGOs trying to help migrants facing numerous bureaucratic hurdles are struggling to maintain a consistent presence at sea.

As weather conditions for crossing the sea improve heading into summer, Mazaras fishermen find themselves increasingly alone, caught in the middle of a humanitarian crisis that appears to be getting worse and facing a hostile Libyan Coast Guard.

Many of the fishermen feel their government has abandoned them in favour of maintaining good relations with Libyan authorities (an accusation Italian authorities refute), and are frustrated that Italy appears to be turning a blind eye to the risks of partnering with Libya to curb migration risks the fishermen have witnessed and experienced first hand.

Last September, 18 fishermen from Mazara were captured by forces aligned with Libyan military commander Khalifa Haftar while fishing in a disputed area of the sea. They were held in a detention centre in Libya for more than 100 days. Dozens of fishermen from the town have been similarly detained in a series of incidents stretching back to the 1980s.

More recently, at the beginning of May, the crew of a Libyan Coast Guard boat donated by Italy opened fire at three fishing vessels from Mazara wounding one fisherman for allegedly entering the disputed waters.

Italys government acknowledges that maritime boundaries need to be more clearly defined to avoid future incidents, but with the focus on other priorities from the COVID-19 pandemic to controlling migration thats not likely to happen any time soon.

Meanwhile, Mazaras fishermen are frustrated that tens of millions of euros of Italian taxpayer money is being used to support a group that attacks and detains them, and they are increasingly speaking out about their experiences and about what they say is Italy and the EUs Faustian bargain with Libya in the central Mediterranean.

If [Libya] is not safe for us, who are Italian citizens and can have protection, how can it be [safe] for vulnerable asylum seekers? Roberto Figuccia, a Mazara fisherman who has been detained by the Libyan Coast Guard twice since 2015 and has rescued more than 150 asylum seekers and migrants at sea, told The New Humanitarian.

Located on the western edge of Sicily, Mazara del Vallo is around 170 kilometres from Tunisia and 550 kilometres from Libya about the same distance the town is from Rome. Home to around 50,000 people, it is a melting pot of Mediterranean cultures. Since the 1960s, thousands of Tunisians have settled in the area to work in the fishing sector, and many now hold dual citizenship. About seven percent of the towns current population was born abroad a relatively high number for a small Italian town.

Russo, however, has roots in Mazara that stretch as far back as anyone in his family can remember. He was born and raised in the town, and never left.

He recalled setting out on a pristine early autumn morning in 2007 from Mazaras port, steering his fishing boat out into the shimmering waters of the central Mediterranean. Russo and his five-man crew were preparing the fishing nets as the sun inched higher in the morning sky when someone spotted an object shining on the horizon. The crew soon realised it was a help signal from a boat stranded at sea.

Russo piloted his trawler towards the people in distress. As he drew closer, he saw a deflating rubber dinghy packed with asylum seekers and migrants. There were 26 people onboard, mostly from Chad and Somalia. It was the first time Russo had rescued anyone at sea, and the event is seared in his memory.

Back then before numbers started soaring in 2014 and 2015 and the wider world suddenly started paying attention it was still common for anywhere from around 17,000 to 37,000 asylum seekers and migrants to cross the central Mediterranean to Italy in any given year. No one was really keeping track of how many people died.

Italian authorities would often call on fishing vessels from Mazara like Russos to assist in rescues and stabilise the situation until the Italian Coast Guard or Navy could arrive. Since we were often closer to the scene, they would tell us to go ahead, Russo said. We would do it even if that meant losing work days and money.

The fishermens rescue efforts gained international recognition, and several received awards for their humanitarian spirit. For most fishermen from Mazara, the rescues are not political; they just make sense. We have never abandoned anyone, said Russo, who has been involved in five other rescues. We follow the law of the sea. For us, these are not migrants; they are simply people stranded at sea that we must help.

But in 2009, attitudes about migration outside of Mazara started to shift. The previous year, nearly 37,000 asylum seekers and migrants landed in the country an increase from around 20,000 each of the three previous years. Sensing a political opportunity, Silvio Berlusconi, the populist Italian prime minister at the time, focused attention on the increase and signed a treaty of friendship with Libyan dictator Muammar Gaddafi, committing the two countries to work together to curb irregular migration.

In July 2009, Italy also introduced a law criminalising irregular entry into the country, and fishermen found themselves facing the threat of being charged with facilitating irregular immigration for rescuing people at sea. Each time they disembarked asylum seekers and migrants in Italian ports, they were now required to give a deposition to police stating they were not smuggling them into the country.

The 2009 law did not deter Mazara del Vallos fleet, but the policy made it more bureaucratically onerous and potentially legally risky for civilians to rescue people in distress.

Authorities would still close an eye on [rescues] in the first couple of years because those were new guidelines that military authorities had just begun navigating. But it was definitely the first signal that things were about to go in a different direction, Russo explained.

The more decisive shift towards outright hostility against civilians rescuing asylum seekers and migrants in the central Mediterranean began after October 2014, when the Italian Navys search and rescue mission Mare Nostrum came to an end.

The mission was launched one year early, in October 2013, after more than 400 people died in two shipwrecks off the coast of the Italian island of Lampedusa. In Italy and the rest of Europe, the tragedies galvanised a brief moment of sympathy for people risking their lives at sea to reach safety.

But the year that it operated, the number of people crossing the central Mediterranean jumped to over 170,000 nearly three times the previous high. Most of those arriving in Europe were refugees escaping civil war in Syria or fleeing repression and human rights abuses in countries like Eritrea. But among European politicians, the idea took hold that having search and rescue assets at sea was acting as a pull factor, encouraging people to attempt the journey.

Negotiations over an EU-backed operation to replace Mare Nostrum broke down. In the months and years that followed, Mazaras fishermen noticed Italian and EU naval assets deployed to combat people smuggling or enforce the UN arms embargo on Libya slowly started retreating from the areas where most migrant boats crossed.

Read more Death on the Central Mediterranean: 2013-2020

Harassment and violent attacks by the Libyan Coast Guard against fishermen from Mazara also picked up pace, the fishermen say.

Then, in 2017 Italy signed a memorandum of understanding with Libya to begin funding, training, and equipping the Libyan Coast Guard to reduce the number of asylum seekers and migrants reaching Europe; and Italy and the EU began pushing Libya to take control of the search and rescue zone off its coast.

The migration agreements were met with backlash from the Sicilian fishing sector, Tommaso Macaddino, president of the Sicilian branch of the fishermens labour union UILA Pesca, told The New Humanitarian. We already knew deputising the control of that area to Libyans would set a dangerous precedent, not only for migrants but also for Italians.

For Macaddino, the negotiating power the agreement gave Libya and the trade-off Italy was prepared to make seemed clear. A larger portion of waters under the management of Libyans meant migrants in that area were less of a European responsibility, he said. It also meant, Macaddino added, that in order to keep its Libyan partners happy the Italian government was less likely to challenge Libyas claim to the disputed waters where Mazaras fishermen work.

In 2017 and 2018, the situation for civilians rescuing asylum seekers and migrants in the central Mediterranean took yet another turn for the worse. Several Italian prosecutors opened investigations into whether NGOs were cooperating with Libyan people smugglers to facilitate irregular migration. In the end, none of the investigations turned up evidence of collusion, but they helped create an atmosphere of public and political hostility towards civilian rescue efforts.

Mazaras fishermen once celebrated as humanitarians were now seen by many as part of the migration problem.

After Matteo Salvini a right-wing, anti-migrant politician became interior minister in 2018, he closed Italys ports to NGO rescue ships and introduced hefty fines for civilian rescuers who ran afoul of increasingly stringent Italian guidelines as part of a broader crackdown on migration.

For Pietro Marrone, a 62-year-old fisherman from Mazara who became a captain at age 24, the outright hostility was the last straw. Instead of stepping back, it motivated many of us well aware of the risks Libyan militia represent to any human being to keep saving lives at sea, Marrone told The New Humanitarian.

Marrone decided to join the NGO Mediterranea Saving Humans as a captain for rescue missions. In March 2019, the rescue boat Marrone was piloting saved 49 people all migrants from western Africa, and several of them children who had been drifting off the coast of Lampedusa for two days. Italian authorities refused to give Marrone permission to bring the rescued people into an Italian port, saying they should be returned instead to Libya. He brought them ashore anyway.

I refused to obey a military order to leave them at sea. In the 1980s, I had a violent encounter with Libyan militias, [so I know that] no one is safe if taken back to Libya, he said.

Read more What happens to migrants forcibly returned to Libya?

Marrone was charged with facilitating illegal immigration and disobeying the military, and had his captains license revoked. The case against him was dismissed last December after Salvinis immigration bills were amended by a new Italian government that entered office in September 2019. But NGOs continue to be investigated and prosecuted for participating in rescue activities.

Out of 21 cases opened since 2017, none has gone to trial. Since the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic, Italian authorities have impounded NGO search and rescue boats at least eight times, citing what they say are various technical and operational irregularities. The NGOs say it is just another way the Italian government is trying to criminalise rescue activities.

Whats the crime here? Marrone asked. Humanitarian missions keep being criminalised, and migrants [keep being] pushed back to a country that cannot guarantee their protection, in crowded detention centres.

Ilyesse Ben Thameur, 30, is the child of Tunisian immigrants to Mazara del Vallo. He is also one of the 18 fishermen who was captured last September and held in Libya for over 100 days.

The detention centre where he was held was overcrowded and filthy. Many of the other people in the facility were migrants or Libyan intellectuals opposed to Haftar. Ben Thameur said he could hear their screams as they were tortured, and see the lingering marks of violence on their bodies. Like other fishermen from Mazara, when he was released, he returned to Sicily with physical and psychological wounds.

If even EU citizens like myself cannot be safe there, imagine what it must feel like for migrants who have no one backing them up.

While captive, the Italian Ministry of Foreign Affairs reassured Ben Thameurs family that he was being kept in safe and healthy conditions. People in Mazara think the messaging was an attempt to hide the abuses taking place in a system they say Italy is complicit in supporting.

Our stories show that Libya, as a whole, is not a safe port for anybody, Ben Thameur said. If even EU citizens like myself cannot be safe there, imagine what it must feel like for migrants who have no one backing them up.

In May 2020, just a few months before he was captured, Ben Thameur helped save dozens of asylum seekers and migrants. He believes that if his crew wasnt there, they might have been intercepted by the Libyan Coast Guard and taken back to detention centres in Libya.

Having experienced detention in Libya, it bothers him that his government is helping to send thousands of people back to those conditions. Along with other fishermen from Mazara and across Sicily Ben Thameur hopes speaking up about his own experiences will help make a difference.

If they dont believe migrants' accounts, they will at least have to listen to EU citizens who experienced the same tortures, he said. Maybe our testimony showing that even Italians arent safe [in Libya] could somehow help change things.

sdi/er/ag

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A Sicilian fishing town, and the perils of Italy's migration deal with Libya - The New Humanitarian

In an interview, youve said that the film Meel Patthar (Milestone, released on Netflix on May 7, premiered at last years Venice International Film Festival) tells you where you are and how much further you have to go. Could you explain?

That was about why Id named the film Meel Patthar (Milestones). Milestones tell you where you are and how far you have to go. But in the film, its a weird sort of milestone, because even after 500,000 km, Ghalib has absolutely no idea hes achieved that. Theres just uncertainty.

Your debut feature Soni (2018) came as a reflection on the aftermath of the 2012 Delhi gang-rape case. How did the idea for your second feature come about?

I was always interested in writing about the world. There are people in my extended family who have been truck drivers at some point in their lives and then went on to become transporters. Growing up, I had heard stories and this whole idea fascinated me that there is this individual whos just travelling all his life, but still kind of stuck within this little box. So, travelling but not really, travelling. This idea was an interesting paradox. Living outside India, I got a chance to discover more about this world. A lot of the transportation in the trucking business, especially in the US, is dominated by the Indian community. Originally, the idea was that of an immigrant truck driver. When I moved here (to India) after Soni, the idea then was to work in north India, especially Delhi. Delhi has Sanjay Gandhi Transport Nagar, which, I think, is the biggest transportation zone in all of Asia. The place is quite appealing just from the image perspective alone. So, the film eventually became a film about a Punjabi truck driver who was working in Delhi.

You named your protagonists after poets Ghalib (Suvinder Vicky) and Pash (Lakshvir Saran), and theres a cameo by the young poet Aamir Aziz, too. How important was poetry to the film?

Initially, I wanted the driver to be an aspiring poet. But then that train of thought ran a bit hollow. I chose to stick with the names because I wanted to explore this thought, what if nobody mentions their names in the poetic context in the film. The names by themselves are meaningless in the story. Chances are, for the majority of the young audiences, barring those into literature and poetry, these names dont mean much, they will not know who these names belong to or what they mean. I felt it would be an interesting experiment to see how many people actually notice. But, overall, it was a cynical, pessimistic thought at work that the names are meaningless in the story. As for Aziz, we wanted someone who could play a union leader, who came from Bihar or Jharkhand, because most people who do the loading-unloading work are from there. When we got his (Azizs) audition, we didnt register who he was even though his face seemed familiar. Then, people were not familiar with his poetry yet.

Why arent the trucks in your film colourful and quirky like the ones we see on the roads and in Bollywood films?

There are both kinds of trucks in the trade. I decided not to show ostentatiously decorated trucks in the film because Ghalib isnt a kind of truck driver whos interested in doing that. He lives with a sense of detachment, does his work, and thats all. Hes aloof, not interested in making places he inhabits attractive. We had a whole casting process for the truck. Bollywood sees things in a different way and a certain kind of truck driver and bright trucks are a part of their film experience. They choose to portray them in that way: happy, loud and gregarious.

You finished shooting the film right before the lockdown last year. How do you think the truck drivers community has been dealing with the situation?

The truckers suffered immensely last year, because everything stopped. I think there was a period of almost two weeks when they didnt even allow many of the truck drivers to come on to the highways. I dont know why the migrant crisis surprised so many of us. What were they (migrant workers) supposed to do? This is the kind of thing that happens when you do things just out of pure impulse, without even understanding the consequences for a large majority of the country. This showed that people are only interested in saving themselves, even if it comes at the cost of throwing the ball under the bus. That they (migrant labourers) dont matter.

With rural-urban migration and woes of the urban working class as the films dominant themes, are you critiquing capitalism through Meel Patthar?

Ive always felt that they (truck drivers) are the backbone of our economy. The transportation business is essentially what makes civil life possible. The whole capitalistic system is still very much dependent on this industry, and yet, the sector ends up being at the receiving end of the injustices of the system. It is ironic that people who are probably at its core, end up becoming probably its biggest victims. A lot of them dont even realise it until its too late. You see that in the film through the strike of the loader (porters) and a veteran truck driver friend of Ghalib being laid off.

But Ive also tried to highlight other things, like how we expect too much from the urban working class. The scene where Ghalib is trying to walk up the stairs as the lift is out of use, he encounters the lift repairman, and the gas-cylinder-delivery man, I wanted to expose the world that exists outside of Transport Nagar, and how that world is also infested with the same injustices and tension. Its hard to pin down whose fault it is. Its the whole complexity of our modern Indian society. These are just observations that Im just trying to share with the audiences.

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I dont know why the migrant crisis surprised us - The Indian Express

How the elderly, among the most vulnerable victims of COVID-19, are braving the pandemic

After 57 years of marriage, she is newly single. Her husband died of COVID-19 in the last week of April. Her son, who was in the ICU at the time, is better now. The Pune-based senior citizen (who does not wish to be named) is aware that several members of her yoga club have also passed away. Nobody knows who will be next, so I have started calling up everybody, whose number I have, to talk. I dont know if I will get the chance to meet them again, she says.

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I dont know why the migrant crisis surprised us

In an interview, youve said that the film Meel Patthar (Milestone, released on Netflix on May 7, premiered at last years Venice International Film Festival) tells you where you are and how much further you have to go. Could you explain?

That was about why Id named the film Meel Patthar (Milestones). Milestones tell you where you are and how far you have to go. But in the film, its a weird sort of milestone, because even after 500,000 km, Ghalib has absolutely no idea hes achieved that. Theres just uncertainty.

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Why it is timely to read Bhaswati Mukherjees fresh look into how Bengal negotiated Partition in Bengal and its Partition: An Untold Story

An impassioned and deeply-researched work, Bhaswati Mukherjees Bengal and Partition: An Untold Story is an invaluable contribution to the particular issues that animated politics in Bengal, a marginally Muslim-majority province, that distinguished it from the freedom movement in much of the rest of the country. It was not only, or indeed most significantly, the Hindu-Muslim demography of the province that gave it a unique perspective, but, overlaying these religious differences was the proud linguistic unity and syncretic cultural heritage that made Bengal different. (I would rate Chapter 6, The Struggle for identity: Language and Religion, as the most outstanding in the book).

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How seduction works in the world of flora

In the animal kingdom, its usually the male of the species that struts its stuff and tries to seduce the ladies, who will pick the most handsome, rugged and tough as her mate, checking out his looks and fitness and fighting capabilities. In the botanical world, a plant, rooted to the ground cannot wander around showing off, singing and dancing to seduce a mate. So, it employs the services of, what one could roughly say is, a marriage bureau to get itself a mate. This bureau has a host of mammals, insects and birds (and even the wind) on its rolls. And as there are no free lunches, these services have to be paid for in sweet nectar (sugar water, really), produced in glands called nectarines, and nourishing pollen.

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How Hindustani classical singer Aditya Modak trained to play the lead in The Disciple

Chaitanya Tamhanes film The Disciple opens with Pt Vinayak Pradhan (essayed deftly by Jaipur-Atrauli gharana classical singer Pt Arun Dravid) on the stage. The ageing vocalist, from Alwar gharana, is immersed in the glorious Jaunpuri (Jhanana bichhua baje), a raga that evokes wonder and bhakti bhaav. His accompanying disciple looks on in reverence, with eager nods and eyes that capture his desire to perform like his guru one day. Moments later, the setting shifts to the gurus room, who, with a teacup in hand, breaks down the raga to his promising shishya as Sharad Nerulkar (played by Hindustani classical artiste Aditya Modak), tanpura in hand, rote-learns and sings.

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How Raza Mirs Murder at the Mushaira looks back at the rebellious days of 1857

On a dark night in May 1857, a solitary man on horseback makes his way towards Shahjahanabad. Unrest had been fomenting in the countryside, bitter resentment spilling over from years of humiliation and abuse by the British, who had, since an obscure battle in Plassey, come to control greater parts of the country. Sarfaraz Laskar, the rider, knew that the time was ripe to flame that seething animosity into a full-blown rebellion if he could make his way to the seat of the etiolated Mughal emperor Bahadur Shah Zafar, that is.

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Why Sanjaya Baru looks at the dismantling of an old order of power elites for a new ideological hegemony in Indias Power Elite: Caste, Class and Cultural Revolution

Debate on the constantly evolving power elite in India is not a new concept. The strength of Sanjaya Barus latest book, however, is its topicality. Under Prime Minister Narendra Modi, the term power elite has acquired a new, thought-provoking, somewhat sinister inference. Modi, as Baru sees it, has dismantled the old order of power elites in Delhi and seeks to impose an unquestioning hegemonic domination on an ideological basis. Globalised upper-class intellectuals and liberals are suspect and to be replaced by middle-class Hindu nationalists who serve, ostensibly, the larger cause of Bharat as opposed to that of India. Any negation of the new faith is viewed with unconcealed hostility.

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Sunday Long Reads: Elderly in the pandemic, migrant crisis, seduction in the plant kingdom, and more - The Indian Express