Narendra Modi gave the notice of suspending public transports only four hours before the nationwide lockdown and has been consistently extending it. India is witnessing the largest exodus since partition.
Since the lockdown, thousands of migrant workers fled to highways and roads to walk hundreds of miles to reach their homes. They worked at construction sites, ran food stalls, drove taxies and other small businesses to feed their family, as their work came to a halt due the lockdown. They were compelled to flee for their homes and begin their journey of hundreds of miles on foot.
More than 400 migrant workers have lost their lives on their way to home in accidents, violence and many have starved. Day to day reports are surfacing about the death of dozens of migrants in accidents. Meanwhile, a report from Aurangabad shocked the nation where a goods train crushed 16 migrant workers to death.
After that, 24 migrant workers died in an accident in Uttar Pradesh’s Auraiya. The headlines are filled with these reports but still, the government is not doing much for the migrant workers, even Mr Modi didn’t address migrant workers in his last public broadcast. Hunger seems a bigger trauma than the pandemic for these migrant workers.
A 12 years old girl from Chhattisgarh, Jeeta Madkami, died on her way to home from Telangana to Bijapur after walking 150 kilometres. She died just 24 kilometres away from home. Doctors said that starvation and dehydration were the reasons for her death.
The migrant workers who are stranded in cities are dependent on the government for food, and the government is providing that to them. But the migrants who are on their way home are dying due to exhaustion and hunger.
Not only that, but many visuals are also flooding on the internet in which cops can be seen while torturing and assaulting migrants brutally. A similar video from Uttar Pradesh’s Budaun shows that cops humiliated some migrant workers and forced them to hop down the road with their luggage hung to their back. Instead of helping those desperate poor, cops have been caught while harassing and assaulting them.
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Many health experts and even opposition leaders are considering this lockdown as essential to control the spread of COVID-19 pandemic. But the inhumane and unprepared implementation of this lockdown has hit the migrant workers very hard.