“Global Pandemic”- everyone talks about it all over the world. Many countries following strict lockdown rules and some aren’t. Uncertainty crawls all over the earth, no one able to escape from it. Whether it can be University students are thinking about the future, parents about their jobs, frontline health workers about their health, Covid-19 positive patients about their cure and country leaders about their economy, and so on. So far, no one has a proper solution. Yes, we are hearing from leaders almost every day. Many countries flattened their coronavirus curve and many other nations are struggling to cope to contain the situation since it is going out of their hands. Still, no one cracked a code to put an end to this dilemma.
In India, things are no so different since it is the same. What I mean is rich people have their Instagram to keep them busy. Posting their day-to-day lives now and then. There are some genuine cases who are raising their voices against injustice. But their peers’ personal life posts get more attention from media. On the other hand, we are seeing peoples such as migrant workers how they are being treated so far.
Migrant workers – most of them work in booming construction sites in megacities such as Delhi, Mumbai, Bangalore, Chennai, Hyderabad. They live in tents nearby set up by the construction moguls. When lockdown announced by the prime minister they were abandoned since the work was put on halt. Their landowners stopped providing basic amenities in many cases. No transports made them strapped in a place where they can’t literally practice the social distancing (1.5 meters). Their situation became worse than before. They were abandoned by their landlords and sadly by their ruling state and the central government. I can’t even imagine their situation since I am writing it from a cozy little apartment.
Why the federal government does not give care to support millions of migrant workers? Are they not citizens? They are the backbones of all skyscrapers though they get very-little as their wage. Though some started their journey on foot. Many reached their home walking hundreds of miles and some died on the way amidst the scorching heat and starvation. Became refugees within their own countries. Let down by their landlords and the ruling governments. Their life became no value. Their dignities were stripped off. But they walked, walked, walked, walked and walked. Some gone under sanitizer-spray bath like cockroaches, some hit by a train and died, many lathi-charged by merciless policemen, and many quarantined in spaceless-cramped-camps. Still, they walked and walked until they reached their home. Hope flourishes in a hopeless situation, nothing able to take their hope away. No, wait a minute they were desperate and do not know what to do. So, it is better to apply their situation as hopeless, helpless, betrayed, agony, and frustrated. They became refugees in their own countries, an exodus.
