India grapples with COVID-19 migrant worker chaos
06 June, 2020
An exodus of migrant labourers has fled India’s cities - the old and the frail, walking with sticks; couples fighting infants and luggage, sobbing children trailing behind, trudging a huge selection of kilometers on highways back again to their native villages.
On Mar 24, Prime Minister Narendra Modi announced a national lockdown to regulate the COVID-19 pandemic, with four hours of notice, confining 1.3 billion people to their homes.
The pandemic exposed precarious living conditions for the nation’s poor in overcrowded shanties where social distancing and handwashing appear to be a cruel joke.
INDIA’S INFORMAL ECONOMY
More than 85 per cent of the country’s workforce toil in the informal economy, reports the International Labour Organization, and as much as a third of the country’s population are internal migrants.
The move may have exacerbated COVID-19’s spread. Millions of poor migrants defied the order to remain indoors.
With factories and businesses shuttered no jobs, savings or social security advantages to cushion them, this disempowered demographic made an exodus from cities where they cannot afford food.
Many migrants result from less developed states like Rajasthan, Uttar Pradesh, Bihar, West Bengal, Jharkhand and Odisha to flee poverty or conflict to work as seasonal labour in urban factories.
They build roads, elegant malls and houses or pull rickshaws, clean homes or are vendors to keep carefully the wheels of the informal economy turning. They contribute 50 per cent of India’s national income and constitute nearly 30 % of the human capital foot of the country, based on the government’s Economic Survey 2018-2019.
Experts fear the humanitarian crisis will push this segment further into penury, as noted by the International Labour Organization in a written report on COVID-19 and migration, warning of “catastrophic consequences” for approximately 400 million people employed in India’s informal economy.
A World Bank study on a single topic is equally grim: “Lockdowns, loss of employment, and social distancing prompted a chaotic and painful procedure for mass return for internal migrants in India and several countries in Latin America.”
The lender exhorted the Indian government to include internal migrants in health services, cash-transfer and other social programs, while protecting them from discrimination.
GOVERNMENT SUPPORT LACKING
Though the central and state governments taken care of immediately the crisis by rolling out a 1.7 trillion rupee (US$23 billion) package, as well as some direct cash benefit transfers, thousands complain they can not access these schemes.
Civil society activists and policy analysts slam the fiscal package as woefully inadequate.
“Almost every other country hit by the COVID-19 pandemic did more because of its poor and working persons than the Indian government,” suggests Brinda Karat, former Rajya Sabha member of parliament.
He deplored the government for writing off bad loans, generally for corporations, rather than saving the poor from starvation.
Indian economist and Nobel laureate Abhijit Banerjee offers scathing criticism. “India hasn’t discussed a sizable enough package,” he noted in a video exchange with Congress parliamentarian Rahul Gandhi.
“We are still talking about 1 % of GDP. The US has gone for 10 per cent of GDP.”
Following widespread public outrage over the government’s tight-fisted response, Modi announced another package of US$277 billion.
However, economists recommend the tranche caters more to long-term uplift of the economy through fiscal measures instead of putting cash in the hands of the desperately poor.
Analysts scrutinising details supplied by Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman figured the excess spending boost is much less than the 10 per cent of gross domestic product as the federal government suggested.
SCRAMBLING TO ACCOMPLISH SOMETHING
Wary of bad optics, some state governments scrambled to supply succor to the needy, organising trains and buses to ferry them back to hometowns.
However, this move soon became mired in controversy due to lack of clarity on who would pay - the governments announced that the journeys will be free, yet migrants showed receipts for full payments, and the endeavour presented an image of running migrants out of communities.
Some employers didn't want to lose workers. The federal government abruptly cancelled special trains from the southern state of Karnataka returning thousands of migrants stranded by the lockdown, expressing concern that construction activities resuming in the state would need workers.
This triggered a furor, with critics lashing out at the government for treating migrants like “bonded labour”. Authorities rescinded their decision.
A “PM Cares Fund” launched on Mar 28 with public donations to bolster relief efforts through the pandemic, and critics questioned why the US$2 billion corpus wasn’t utilised to facilitate rescue and rehabilitation for migrants.
“Ironically, while India has numerous policies for social security for education, healthcare, skilling, food security and pensions for the organised sector, migrant labour is proffered no such benefits,” asserts Prateek Mittal, economist and author.
“This glaring asymmetry has been exposed in the current emergency.”
He adds the social welfare scheme, Pradhan Mantri Kisan Samman Nidhi, guarantees farmers US$84 each year as minimum income support and crop insurance, yet such provisions exclude migrant workers.
OVERCROWDED SHELTERS
The most enduring image from the protracted COVID-19 confinement is thousands of migrant workers in the united states pushed into overcrowded shelters hastily erected by state governments, civil society groups and employers.
Lekhi Ram, 32, stuck at a shelter in New Delhi after March 29, waited to rejoin his wife and four children after losing his job at a garment factory that closed in March.
“Whatever money I saved has been allocated to buying food,” he explained.
“I called the government helpline after which an NGO volunteer gave me some ration of rice, edible oil and vegetables. But now, I just want to go back home.”
Migrants complain of unhygienic conditions inside the camps and little enforcement of social distancing, triggering fears of the infection spreading rapidly among this vulnerable group.
INEPT BUREACRACY AND LAZY POLICYMAKING
The tragedy is largely the consequence of an inept bureaucracy and lazy policymaking, conclude analysts, reflected in inadequate internal data on migrants.
“Official statistics ... mainly result from the dated census reports define a migrant - as somebody who lives somewhere that's not their host to birth or their last host to residence,” write Aditi Ratho and Soumya Bhowmick for the Observer Research Foundation.
Most migrants lack ration cards or the cards carry domicile restrictions. For migrant labourers no more surviving in the state where in fact the card was issued, regulations prevent access to subsidies.
The duo recommend launching a drive to collate up-to-date data on migrants within states to measure the funds required to provide them with food supplies, housing, sanitation and financial services - currently inaccessible for seasonal migrant workers.
Bolstering India’s abysmal shelling out for health could can help ameliorate the suffering. In the Union Budget of 2020 to 2021, total expenditure marked for health is 1.3 % of gross domestic product.
This amount compares poorly with other BRICS nations: Brazil, 9.2 per cent; South Africa, 8.1 per cent; Russia, 5.3 per cent; and China, 5 per cent.
Developed nations spend more: THE UNITED STATES, 16.9 %; Germany, 11.2 % and Japan, 10.9 per cent.
After addressing the COVID-19 crisis, the government’s long-term goal ought to be to bring greater amounts of migrants in to the formal workforce.
Mittal concludes that could “provide a robust social security architecture, ensuring usage of healthcare services, short-term relief for lack of income, and compensation for occupational hazard and provision of food through the public distribution system”.
Unemployment in India is approximately 6 % with youth unemployment at 10 %. Data compiled by Centre for Monitoring Indian Economy shows a massive jump in weekly unemployment rate following lockdown.
Experts say this may be the consequence of the migrant workforce fleeing cities without assured source of income as economical activity ground to a halt. India’s economy and several ruined livelihoods won’t heal soon.
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