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New Delhi: The BJP in West Bengal has started a survey asking people questions about Mamata Banerjee governments alleged mismanagement of the Covid-19 crisis in the state.

As part of the survey, launched last week, the BJP has posed four questions whether Mamata is hiding information related to the pandemic, are people from certain areas violating the lockdown because of Mamatas appeasement policy, who is responsible for people not getting ration and if people are suffering from the governments low testing capacities.

State BJP president Dilip Ghosh said they have received 12,000 responses so far.

Questions on migrant crisis and economic emergency will be added to the survey soon, he said.

We have asked people to answer these questions and register protest because we are repeatedly raising questions on the states low testing figures and fudging of Covid-19 numbers. We are not the only one raising questions, even doctors associations have raised questions on the state governments Covid figures. The inter-ministerial central team also questioned the chief ministers handling (of the crisis), Ghosh told ThePrint.

From March to April, the state said it had 200 cases, but in the last ten days, after the Centres intervention, now the dashboard is showing 1,344 cases, Ghosh said.

Mamata is still playing with the health of the poor. We want people to put pressure on Mamata. This is the tip of the iceberg. Every state government is fighting to save lives but Mamata is fighting to save her image and hide numbers, he added.

As of Wednesday, Bengal has 1,047 active Covid-19 cases and 1,456 confirmed cases, with 144 deaths (including those caused by comorbidities), according to the state government bulletin.

West Bengal has the highest mortality rate in the country at 13.2 per cent.

Also read: More testing, daily detailed updates Mamatas Covid strategy sees major turnaround

The issue of ration distribution is a major bone of contention between the ruling Trinamool Congress and the BJP.

The BJP even held demonstrations last Friday in Ranaghat against an alleged attempt to steal a truckload of rice sent by the Centre and pass off the food grain as state relief.

Under the Pradhan Mantri Garib Kalyan Anna Yojana, free rice of 5 kg and pulses of 1 kg every month is to be distributed among the poor, but the opposition and even Governor Jagdeep Dhankhar have alleged a scam in the public distribution system (PDS).

Under Pradhan Mantri Grib Kalyan Ann Yojna FREE RATION is available for THREE MONTHS -5 kg rice per person and 1 kg dal for each household per month. Worrisome distribution reports. Officials need to distance from politics and keep diversion/siphon sharks away, tweeted Dhankhar Wednesday.

The state government has show-caused 359 ration dealers and suspended 64 so far for their alleged involvement in corrupt practices while distributing food grains.

We are raising this issue of malpractices for the last 15 days. Government officials and Trinamool workers siphoned off free ration, which was meant for the poor. We have demanded investigation into this loot of ration, Ghosh told ThePrint.

BJP general secretary and in-charge of West Bengal Kailash Vijayvargiya Tuesday wrote a letter to the chief minister, highlighting discrepancy in the governments Covid-19 bulletins.

The government is coming out with a much detailed bulletin since Monday, but the data it is providing to people still has a lot of discrepancies, he said.

Alipurduar district has been shown to have zero cases but health officials confirm 4 cases. Districts like Murshidabad, North Dinajpur have a high number of Tablighi returnees and migrant labourers but the health bulletin showing zero cases is really surprising, he wrote in the letter.

On Tuesday, the chief minister said that 5.57 crore household visits have been conducted over the last one month and given necessary health advice.

During the period from 7 April to 3 May, over 5.57 crore household visits have been conducted. 872 cases of persons with SARI (severe acute respiratory illness) and 91,515 cases of persons with ILI (influenza-like illness) have been identified and given necessary health advice, she said.

But Vijayvargiya contested the claims, saying: This is another lie by the inefficient chief minister. No one knows about this screening except Mamata Banerjee. She is jeopardising peoples lives. What purpose will she achieve by concealing Covid-19 positive numbers?

State BJP leader Rahul Sinha told ThePrint: Our MPs are in house arrest for months now. They have not been allowed to move out from their house, only TMC workers and their MPs and MLAs have permission to provide relief work in this pandemic. The whole world is fighting Covid but Mamata is fighting with the BJP workers. This is strange.

Also read: Why an angry Mamata Banerjee was forced to do a U-turn on Bengals Covid strategy

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Bengal BJP goes to town over Mamata fudging Covid numbers, PDS scandal, starts survey - ThePrint

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Indias treatment of its migrant population has been a disgrace. We must redeem ourselves by admitting our failures and devising policy approaches that are sensitive, humane and respectful of individual freedom and dignity.

Much of the blame on this issue that was directed at the Narendra Modi government immediately after the lockdown was unfair. The nationwide lockdown had to be imposed quickly and not every scenario could have been catered for. Sure, the governments antennae failed to pick up the risk that millions of migrants would make a beeline for their homes. But as far as one can tell, few outside experts, activists or mediapersons had flagged it as an important factor ahead of the lockdown. So the Union and state governments had to react to the unfolding human tragedy, which they did to the level their administrative capacities allowed.

That was then. After several weeks of lockdown, you would have thought that the Union and state governments had adequate time and warning to plan and implement measures to better manage the movement of migrants. Yet the manner in which the special Shramik Express trains have been implemented demonstrates that many of our governments neither have the political sensitivity nor the administrative structures to service our migrant population.

Also read: Viral images show MP labourers quarantined in toilet, but BJP says its not what it seems

The Modi government did well to arrange for trains to take stranded migrants back home once administrations across India had figured out how to deal with the outbreak. Those who argue that such trains could have been arranged earlier do not account for the fact that it takes time for local administrations to be capable of managing the influx of inter-state migrants.

What is unfathomable though is the fact that Indian Railways expected migrants to pay the fare including a Rs 50 premium to travel back home. At a time when private hospitals are expected to treat patients for free, when price caps have been imposed on laboratory testing and even hand sanitisers, when private employers are being asked to bear the cost of salaries, the government-owned Indian Railways is unwilling to waive the expenses of a few trains. I am sure we will get clarifications in the coming days, but a notification says that the local state government authority shall collect the ticket fare and hand over the total amount to the Railways.

After Congress president Sonia Gandhi announcedthat her party will foot the bill, the Modi government declared that the Union government subsidises 85 per cent of the railway passenger fare and it is the remaining that will be paid by the state governments. While a few state governments paid the entire ticketed fare, in many cases it was borne by passengers themselves or by charities and civil society groups on their behalf.

Railways might well have contributed Rs 151 crore to the PM-CARES fund, but it would have been more efficient and appropriate for them to waive the passenger fare entirely. India rightly takes pride in evacuating its citizens from war and disaster zones around the world, including during the current pandemic. We rightly do not ask our expatriate citizens to pay the full cost for the trip back home. The coronavirus pandemic is a disaster and the reason to help migrants get back to the safety of their homes is humanitarian. There is abundant cause for the Indian state to pay for it, not least when it owns airlines, railways and bus companies, and even if it didnt.

Also read: MGNREGA, skill-based work options states are weighing to help returning migrant workers

There could be three policy reasons to ask migrants to pay for the journey.

First, providing free long-distance transport will create incentives for the marginal migrant to go back home, leading to raising the demand for tickets on a limited supply of trains. Well, the answer to that is to run more trains.

Second, to discourage migrants from leaving so that the economic revival is faster. This is unconscionable for it treats migrants as instruments, not full citizens. Migrants are no less capable of exercising judgement over their personal affairs as bureaucrats, political leaders or columnists, and if this means economic challenges, then that is the price of the society we have become.

Third, their reverse exodus back might spread the virus to rural areas in states that have so far been less affected by the pandemic. This is reasonable but no longer tenable after six weeks of lockdown. It is incumbent on every state government to get its act together for surveillance, quarantine, isolation and contact tracing. The argument that local administration is not prepared cannot have a perpetual shelf life.

Why is it that Indian society does not respect and uphold the individual freedom of our migrant fellow citizens? One reason and I am guessing might be because we do not think individual freedom, including our own, is of utmost value. We are okay with families, communities and governments abridging our freedom, often for a good cause. A citizen who does not prize his/her own liberty is unlikely to champion that of others.

Also read: Real social distancing: Special planes for Indias rich, police lathis for working-class poor

So what would a policy that respected the liberty and dignity of the migrant worker look like?

Returning home at this time must be treated as a humanitarian cause. All mass public transport facilities buses and trains should be made available free of cost to any migrant who wishes to travel to a place of safety. If states where they work want them to stay back to sustain their economies, then they should be offered financial incentives. Workers can then compare the costs of going home against the benefits of staying back and decide for their own. In fact, giving them two-way tickets can work both as an incentive and a signal that they are wanted in their work places.

The coronavirus pandemic has exposed the fact that Indias politics has not kept pace with the consequences of our economic growth in yet another area. Migrants have ended up political orphans they are outside their home states and out of mind of those governments. They remain outsiders in the states where they work and local politicians do not consider them as us. Very few state governments seem to care enough about them to be bothered to treat them with dignity, even in this pandemic situation.

The big reform required is for state governments to set up departments to manage both the migrants they host, and the migrants they send. NRIs caught in a crisis can expect to be evacuated because there is a Ministry of External Affairs that is responsible for their welfare. We need a similar mechanism for the welfare of internal migrants, and make state politicians and bureaucrats accountable.

The author is the director of the Takshashila Institution, an independent centre for research and education in public policy. Views are personal.

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Like an MEA to help NRIs in crisis, India needs a system for its internal migrants too - ThePrint

It was a lockdown that unlocked millions of Indians. As India receded into homes in the last week of March, a section of Bharat hit the streets defying the order to stay indoors. For the next few days the India-Bharat contrast played out in the open India hiding at home scared of coronavirus and Bharat out on the streets gripped by a fear bigger than the virus. Over a month into the lockdown, the contrast keeps showing up at Bandra station in Mumbai, Yamuna bank in Delhi, on the streets of Surat

For Indians who witnessed the March exodus closely some images lingered for days an old woman walking with a stick taller than her and struggling to keep up with the family ahead, a teenager breaking the plaster on his leg so that he could walk faster, a girl with a limp crying because she could not keep up with her mother walking ahead with a younger sister.

Collectively, they were more anxious than fearful, felt more abandoned than angry, were lacking security not courage and were dispossessed by the cities they had been working in with a dream to build a better life. That a lockdown could shatter migrants dreams so completely proves how little most of India knew them. Questions people asked initially betrayed their ignorance: Why are they walking? Can they really walk 500 km? Do their bags have all they owned? all signs of discomfort among those with creature comforts.

Poverty line to dignity line: People desperate to leave cities were poor in assets, not in aspiration and self-esteem. They were earning a livelihood not living on handouts. They were poor, but not in the way most people think of the poor and thats because the popular understanding of poverty is badly outdated. Especially in a country where you can drive from one of the planets largest slums, Dharavi, to arguably the worlds most expensive residence in just 20 minutes.

For most people, the yardstick is the official poverty line. When last estimated in 2011-12 nearly 22% Indians were below that line. Since then the countrys GDP has almost doubled and the population has risen less than 10%, implying that the number of poor should be less much less than they were a decade ago. How less? We dont know for sure. But that did not blind us to the migrants plight. Our real and growing blindspot is about the millions who float just above the official poverty line and forever live in danger of falling below it again (see illustration).

An illness, a job loss, death of an earning member is all it takes for a family in this zone to plunge back into poverty. An economic setback of the kind triggered by the coronavirus can push thousands of families down to the line and beyond. The downward spiral could also pull in people who are vaguely defined as lower middle class, especially the self-employed. The rapid expansion of the gig economy (Ola and Uber drivers, courier delivery boys ) in recent years means there will be job losses that wont show up as job loss. Thats because these jobs exist somewhere between the official definition of employed and self-employed.

One way to track poverty in all its dimensions is to replace the poverty line with what McKinsey calls the Empowerment Line. Its a line at which everybody has access to 8 basic needs of life with some dignity drinking water, education, energy, food, healthcare, housing, sanitation and social security. In 2014, when McKinsey did the study, 56% of Indians were estimated to be living below the empowerment line. The migrant crisis would not have been half its size if most Indians were above this line.

Right help at the right time: No doubt social welfare schemes now reach far beyond the officially poor. The JAM trinity (Jan Dhan account, Aadhaar number and mobile phone) has helped target the needy far better. But the exodus tells us what needs to be done next delivering the help in real time.

If most migrants were reached on their mobile with instructions on where they can find a safe shelter with food and income support, or information that their employers and landlords will be paid to take care of them during the lockdown, they wouldnt want to stream out of the cities in such despair.

One way to do this is to build an Aadhaar Plus platform. An optional layer built on top of Aadhaar where people voluntarily put in their job status, income, assets, access to amenities, residence and contact number. This will help identify and grade beneficiaries and deliver help to them just when they need it and in the form they need it sometimes just a text message saying assistance is on its way.

The Aadhaar Plus database will also help build a vulnerability index that could, eventually, replace all other poverty measurements. Policy makers will be able to see precisely where families are along different shades of poverty and help them accordingly. As it turns out, the labour ministry has been working on creating something loosely along these lines called UWIN. Its progress should be made public.

The migration should serve as a vision correction for those who were unable to grasp Indias growing urban underbelly. People have wondered why migrants arent listening to governments. They are, but they arent convinced that governments can walk the talk. Isolated and jobless, they are relying on their faith (lack of it, actually) more than any reasoning. This is happening in a country where budget after budget has been dedicated to the face of the poorest and the weakest person finance ministers have seen. And that should make everybody rethink their faith and understand why migrants have stopped taking words seriously.

DISCLAIMER : Views expressed above are the author's own.

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Why millions defied the lockdown: Stranded or marching, migrants have exposed our ignorance of what poverty in - Economic Times

I dont see the pandemic but the hunger and starvation that comes with it as the reason for large scale unrest, says Manaswini Bhalla, an associate professorof Economics at IIM Bangalore.

The context was the sorry plight of migrant and daily wage labourers stuck in the bigger cities due to the coronavirus lockdown.

Now the migrants can go home, says the government

With most migrant workers confined to shelters and dependent on charity for survival, the Union governments belated realisation that they should be allowed to get home is no doubt welcome. But there is much that is inexplicable about the Centres guidelines on how this is to happen.

Migrant workers take a break as they walk during a nationwide lockdown from Hyderabad to their village in Maharashtra. AP

It is good in principle, but I am not sure enough thought has been given to the modalities of this migration, says Divya Ravindranath, researcher at the Indian Institute of Human Settlements (IIHS).

The timing is the most inexplicable of all. Though lockdown has been extended, industry all over the country is being told to restart. Other measures and lockdown relaxations to slowly restart other segments of the economy are also in the works in all states. After weeks of idleness and no income, the migrant workers, hailing mainly from the eastern states and spread largely across the south and west of the country, could possibly at last see some hope of being able to start earning again, as a restarting economy is going to need this labour in the coming weeks.

Yet, after ignoring their sorry plight for nearly two months, the Centre is now suddenly telling the workers they can go home if they want to, with no guideline on how or from where industry will get the replacement labour they need to restart if migrant labour leaves.

This has led, for instance, to Karnatakachief minister BS Yeddyurappa appealing to migrant workers to stay back, but refraining from any mention of how the state will help them with food and/or money in the meantime.

The guidelines are also silent on how labourers stuck in high containment zones like Mumbai, Chennai, Ahmedabad, Surat and Delhi will be allowed to leave.

In the past week or so, the railways have run a few shramik (labourer) trains from places like Kerala, Telangana, Mumbai and Nashik to destinations in Jharkhand, Madhya Pradesh, Odisha, Uttar Pradesh and Bihar. But permission to get on those trains are ridden with so many ifs and buts, it would make anyones head spin.

A hazy future

What after these people reach home? That, again, is a question that has not been given any thought at all. My biggest concern is about what happens when they get back, said Divya.

What awaits these workers back home is not a better life and jobs, but being sent to quarantine centres of dubious quality before they can head to their villages.

The city is a place of economic stability, the village is the place for social security, is the reason given by Prof Chinmay Tumble of IIM Ahmedabad and author of India Moving: History of Migration, for the desperation among migrant workers to get back home.

Given that these journeys cost money that many of these workers can ill afford, the unintended effect of this decision to get migrants back home could be a feeling among them of insult being piled on injury. To what extent, and to what effect, the feeling will manifest itself is the question.

How life pans out for them in the next few weeks will provide the answer. And the first flashpoint could well be the kind of welcome workers sent on forced leave get when they return to their old places of work and on whether they get any part of their lost wages.

Every trade and industry association has said that they cannot pay workers the April salaries, or even restart their establishments, without substantial government bailouts. Which means going back to their shanties and temporary shelters and, hopefully, some dry ration packets.

Mitigating hunger

In Bengaluru, provision of cooked food is being stopped from 5 May, but no state authority is talking about how the workers are expected to survive without such help. That, despite all this, there have been only sporadic instances of unrest among migrant workers in Surat, Telangana, Chennai, Pune and Bangalore, but that is no indication that it will not spread or get more intense.

While angry reactions may have surfaced in some places, I would refrain from labelling them in any way, says Divya.

Migrant workers wait to board a special train to Agra in Uttar Pradesh at a railway station in Ahmedabad in Gujarat. AP

But as Professor Mahalaya Chatterjee, Centre for Urban Economic Studies, Calcutta University, points out, Social violence can arise from poorer sections of non-migrants too.

As lockdown eases, Professor Chatterjees view is that the problem needs to be looked at from three time spans: just after the lockdown is lifted, the next three months and the long run.

The PDS system needs to be strengthened immediately to ensure essential items reach the entire poorer sections with local bodies helping in identifying and reaching the needy, says Professor Chatterjee.

Soon after lockdown is lifted, there could be reverse flow of people in both directions those stuck in the cities will take the first chance to go back while people who can return, will rush to reclaim their old jobs, he says.

Professor Chatterjees prognosis for the long run is not optimistic.

There are chances that most small traders/manufacturers will be unable to open their business as before. So, loss of livelihood and mass unemployment may result in social unrest, she says.

Noted economist and former Reserve Bank Governor Raghuram Rajan too expressed a similar sentiment in his conversation with former Congress President Rahul Gandhi, saying India should use its DBT network to protect livelihoods and keep people from going into the streets protesting.

Outside the ambit of state welfare

While many people Citizen Matters spoke with preferred to wait and watch how the situation develops post 4 May, all pointed to the shortcomings in the present system for providing relief to the poor and the potential fallout from those left out of these relief packages for whatever reason.

The numbers of such workers run into thousands, if not lakhs, in every major city. There is no official system anywhere to count them or record their presence.The Aadhar card has become an enigma as are other identification instruments like ration cards, etc, says Professor Chatterjee.

If food riots happen, it will not be because of scarcity but due to maldistribution and lack of money in the hands of the needy, he warns.

Getting money into the hands of the poor

There is no shortage of suggestions from citizens and business federations on how to put money in the hands of the needy, though. The governments own recent garib kalyan package deposits a paltry amount monthly in Jan Dhan accounts. But the scheme ignores the fact that many migrant and daily wage labourers do not have such accounts which qualify for the transfer.

Rules have been framed to register such workers so as to enable them to access government schemes. But the rules dont work as a rule, as Divya points out: To give one example, every migrant construction worker is required to renew his registration with the construction welfare board annually (which entails a fee plus a daunting process). Why would a migrant worker want to renew that when he gets nothing by registering in the first place?

The biggest issue, in the end, is the trust deficit between the poor and the marginalised and the government, which this pandemic could reinforce in unexpected ways.

Hunger and poverty have been present in India for long without necessarily resulting in violent protests, said Chandan Gowda, faculty member at Azim Premji University, Bengaluru. But the signs of unrest among the millions of migrant workers under lockdown has made visible the massive problems of rural India, which largely induced many to move into cities as migrant workers in the first place.

A more serious crisis in the making?

Those problems are not going to go away any time soon. And little anecdotal evidence of the experience of those who have managed to get back to their villages has as yet filtered back to the cities.

If and how the economy reboots in the cities, and the kind of employment it will generate, is anybodys guess. But what is clear is that the workers left behind in the cities are not looking for charity. Sure, they accept it to survive, but what they really crave is the dignity of earning a living, which the coronavirus has snatched from them without warning.

The best hope for the migrant and daily wage workers to get back their livelihood in some measure remains in the metros, as it has been for many years. The problems that large-scale reverse migration will create in the rural areas is yet to be considered. Conditions everywhere have changed beyond recognition, and competition for jobs and resources will be fierce, in the cities in particular.

Migrant workers wait for transportation to take them back to their home states in Ahmedabad. AP

There have been instances of returning residents being refused entry into their own villages, with signs saying outsiders are not welcome. This indicates another, as yet unrealised, potentially volatile factor thrown into the mix of search for jobs and livelihoods, especially in urban areas: locals versus outsiders.

When too many people compete for the same limited economic resource, the first instinct is to find a scapegoat for ones problems. The vulnerable migrant worker presents an easy target.

Unfortunately, the cities where they worked and settled have always been indifferent to their wellbeing. They were just cheap labour. Now, if poverty and hunger make them want to go back, the general attitude is that it is their problem. The shramik special trains can take a few thousand of them back. For the rest, whose numbers will still be considerable, their main problem, as lockdown continues, will be hunger, not the virus, and a further deepening of existing social and income inequalities.

This has always been a recipe for unrest. Given the statistics on rising income inequality in the country, social unrest is a real possibility, says Manaswini Bhalla.

One solution Professor Manaswini suggests is creation of a national-level migrant register and record of migrants across the country. Skill mapping of migrant workers is another idea that is floating around, but with no details on the hows, whos and wheres of such an exercise.

While some talk of migrant labour being able to bargain for a better wage for themselves in the face of the predicted labour shortage. If this happens, it could well spark another kind of schism, between those who returned and those who stayed back.

According to Professor Bhalla, the lack of a binding force, a leader or an institution to channel these feelings makes me sceptical of any sort of uprising at this point in time".

Which is not the same as saying that it will not happen as hunger can push anyone into action they would not contemplate otherwise.

In this lockdown that has extended for overeight weeks, the salary a casual labourer has lost is Rs 7,680, says Professor Manaswini.

It is appalling that just Rs 500 a month has been promised to them.

This article was first published inCitizen Matters, a civic media website and is republished here with permission. (c)Oorvani Foundation/Open Media Initiative.

Updated Date: May 05, 2020 20:45:15 IST

Tags : BIhar, Coronavirus Lockdown, CriticalPoint, DBT, Direct Benefit Transfer, Economy, Food Riots, Hunger, Income Inequality, Indian Industries, Jharkhand, Kerala, Labourers, Lockdown, Madhya Pradesh, Migrant Labourers In India, Migrant Workers, Migrant Workers Crisis, Migrants Crisis, Odisha, PDS, Poverty, Public Distribution System, Ration Cards, Rural India, Rural Poor, Rural-Urban Divide, Shramik Trains, Social Unrest, Telangana, Urban India, Uttar Pradesh

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As migrant workers prepare to leave megacities, fixing gaps in PDS and DBT will be key to preventing... - Firstpost

The conversation as India continues to battle the Coronavirus pandemic has been revolving around the sorry state of migrant workers who are stranded in different states, waiting to go back home. With no mode of transportation as a lockdown was imposed to battle the pandemic, stranded migrant workers had taken to the streets several times in several states demanding that the government facilitate their travel back home. Keeping in view the grim situation, the central government started Shramik trains. These are special trains that are meant to ferry migrant workers back to their home states during the Coronavirus lockdown.

The controversy started with the Congress party President, Sonia Gandhi, claiming that the central government is charging passengers for their return back home. Several media houses too peddled this blatant lie. In reality, 85% of the cost is borne by the Central Government (Railways) and 15% was to be borne by the state government. The state govt could choose to cough up the money from their own coffers, take help of some NGO or collect the money through other means. The central government and the railways were not charging the passengers directly at all and the mode of collection of that 15% was left to the state. Considering the Congress was extremely outraged at the through (though a lie of their own making) of money being charged to stranded migrant workers, one would have expected that the Congress-ruled states would ensure that the 15% was drawn from the state coffers and not the migrant workers.

However, that is not what happened.

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According to some reports, while most state governments have paid for the travel of migrant workers from the state exchequer, Kerala, Rajasthan and Maharashtra remain the only three states to have charged the migrant workers for their travel back to their native place.

As perPTI, Maharashtra state minister Nitin Raut has written a letter to Chief Minister Uddhav Thackeray urging him to bear the travel cost of migrants leaving the state.He also wrote to Railway Minister Piyush Goyal on Sunday, requesting that the railways bear the cost of transportation of migrants from the state. In addition to this, a report by Times Now claims that besides Maharashtra, Kerala and Rajasthan have also asked the migrants to pay for the railway tickets.

If one recalls, protests had erupted in Maharashtra and Rajasthan earlier were migrant workers had demanded to go home. There are several protests that have been reported from several other states where migrants from Maharashtra, Rajasthan and other states are also demanded to be sent back home.

New Indian Express reported today (emphasis added):

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Just days after migrant labourers protested at IIT-Hyderabad wanting to back home, several migrant labourers staged a protest on Saturday in Tellapur at the construction site of a well-known real estate developer.Their demand was similar. They wanted to be sent back home by train or bus. Police officials swung into action to pacify an estimated 3,000 labourers at the site. These included migrants from West Bengal, Bihar, Jharkhand, Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh and Odisha.

Over the last three days, the Gujarat government has facilitated the return of over 4,600 migrant workers to their native states of Rajasthan and Madhya Pradesh over the past three days.

However, the numbers are not nearly sufficient. According to a report in the Times of India, 2.84 Lakh migrant workers have registered from various states to go back home to Rajasthan. Bengal too has thousands of labourers stuck in various parts of the country, waiting to go back home, seeing a glimmer of hope as Sharmik trains start ferrying workers back.

But, with thousands and lakhs of workers waiting to return to their home states and the central government running shramik trains, there seems to be a discrepancy in the numbers emerging from central railways.

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Till today morning at 9 AM, 69 trains have been operated by the central government and railways. However, when one sees, the number of trains that have left from states like Rajasthan and Maharashtra are far more than the number of incoming trains to these states (that carried their own migrant labours from other states). In fact, for West Bengal, only two trains have been operated that have carried their own migrant labours back to the state from other states like Rajasthan.

The obvious conclusion drawn from this is that states like Maharashtra and Rajasthan specifically and sending our more migrant labourers to their own home states than accepting their own migrant labours back from other states.

According to sources in the Railways Ministry, West Bengal, Rajasthan and Maharashtra are not giving permission for the trains carrying their own migrants back from various states.

Let us analyse what is happening is different states.

On the 26th of April, Rajasthan Chief Minister Ashok Gehlot said that migrant workers from other states who were stuck in Rajasthan would be allowed to go back to their home states. However, talking about the migrant labours from Rajasthan stuck in other states, he said that they would be allowed to come back in a phased manner. The same Hindustan Times report also mentioned that Uttar Pradesh, Madhya Pradesh and Haryana have already initiated the process to bring back migrant labourers stranded in other statesafter the lockdown to curb the spread of coronavirus pandemic was imposed in March till April 14 and then extended till May 3.

So, while Uttar Pradesh, Haryana and Bihar are ready to accept their migrants back, Rajasthan is emphasising that they will accept their own labourers back in a phased manner. Interestingly, only 3 Shramik trains have are on-run so far that are getting Rajasthani migrants back to the state. On the other hand, 10 trains carrying migrant labours back to other home states have already been terminated and 4 are in the pipeline.

Essentially, while 2.84 lakh migrant workers are waiting to go back to their home state, Rajasthan, from various other states, the Rajasthan government is solely focussing on sending labourers of other states back from Rajasthan but not on accepting their own labourers from other states. While the Rajasthan government is grandstanding and stating that it will bear the cost of migrant workers leaving the state, it has not said anything about accepting its own labourers back, who are stranded in different states.

This could potentially cause a crisis in other states which are accepting their own migrants and also tending to migrants from states like Rajasthan which are not focused on getting their own people back to the state.

For the state of Maharashtra, the numbers are not very different. Only one train has got its own labourers back from various states while 8 trains have ferried labourers back from Maharashtra to their home states.

For example, labourers from Maharashtra were protesting in MP demanding that be sent back home as recently as April 30th. In Hyderabad too, migrant labours including those from Maharashtra staged a protest demanding to go back home.

The conduct of the Maharashtra government has been the worst, so far. While news emerged that they are charging migrant labourers for a health check-up before allowing them to return to their home states, as a measure of hollow grandstanding, Uddhav Thackeray had urged the central government not to charge migrants, hiding the fact that it is the state that is supposed to cough up the 15% and thus, that migrant labourers are being charged is solely the doing of the Maharashtra government.

While Maharashtra itself seems slow in accepting their own migrants back, Maharashtra minister and NCP leader Nawab Malik went ahead and alleged that the Uttar Pradesh government was purposefully putting stringent conditions for the repatriation of migrants staying in Maharashtra in a bid to avoid accepting them even though a total of 16 trains (either terminated, running or in the pipeline) are scheduled to bring migrants back to UP.

The West Bengal government has itself said that they are going slow in accepting their own migrant labours back.

It was reported that the state feels the return of so many people without Covid-19 tests needs to be planned with utmost care so that the infection does not spread to new areas through those coming back. West Bengal chief secretary Rajiva Sinha said no one coming from other states would be allowed to enter containment zones. So, if someone taking a train for Bengal hails from a containment zone, he or she cannot be sent home. Some other arrangement needs to be made and these require time, Sinha said.

It wont be proper to allow lakhs of stranded migrants labourers all in one go. They need to be brought back in phases because detailed planning has to be made. Else every effort made till date will go down the drain, Sinha added.

With this stand, it is no surprise that only two trains have carried Bengal labours back to the state from other states.

Though the trains that ferried migrant labours back to Madhya Pradesh is only one, Shivraj Singh Chouhan has expressly stated that all migrant workers who belong to MP will be brought back. In fact, due to the distance not being much, the State Government arranged several busses for the migrants to come back to MP from various other states, especially from Maharashtra, Rajasthan and Gujarat.

On Saturday, Mr. Chouhan had announced the State government was making arrangements to bring back its native labourers stuck in different States in buses.

We will not let them walk, he said. We have seen them walk back home on roads and rail tracks in the heat. They must be a worried lot. So, we will make all arrangements for their travel, send them back to their villages in buses.

Before boarding buses, the labourers would be screened for illnesses. I request all villagers to behave in a humane way with them. The returnees will be home quarantined, he said.

I have received several phone calls from individuals in different States wanting to come back. We have arranged for e-passes for them so that they could return using their own transport, he said.

Thus, the MP government does not seem to be shrugging its responsibility as far as accepting its own people back is concerned.

While the Congress rule states and opposition ruled states like Rajasthan, Maharashtra and West Bengal seem to uncaring about their own workers stranded in various states, they seem eager to send labourers back from their own state to other states like MP, UP, Bihar and Jharkhand. Potentially, this could cause another crisis for the destination states since several would not only be tending to their workers who are coming back but also workers from these states who are not being accepted by their states.

While this politics played out, these states have been trying to deflect attention by wrongly blaming the central government for charging migrant labourers for the Shramik trains while it was explicit that the 15% has to be coughed up by the state while 85% cost is being borne by the Railways.

Excerpt from:
Are states like Bengal, Rajasthan and Maharashtra refusing to accept their own migrant workers? Here is what we found - OpIndia