During the course of the prevailing nationwide lockdown which will complete 54 days on May 17, of the collective national plight, it’s the extreme distress of the migrant labourers that had attracted maximum spotlight. Images of their long walks involving hundreds of kilometres with little or no food, their bruised and blistered feet and their deaths on the way out of hunger and exhaustion have been flashed by world media in a more definitive manner than national media. Indeed, this has earned the nation a great degree of disrepute and the central point of this justifiable criticism is the world’s largest democratic setup is least concerned about its most vulnerable people. But, the early Friday morning incident in Maharashtra’s Aurangabad when 16 migrant workers sleeping on the tracks due to exhaustion after a long stretch of walk to their way to native places in Madhya Pradesh and crushed by the wheels of a goods train, is a real shock for all. This gruesome and heart-wrenching incident of the highest degree will torment any conscientious individual and efforts to construct a myopic assessment of the episode with sole intention of labelling it as just an accident will be most inappropriate.

The incident has certain factors that even if apparently appear to be specific to the case, can be accepted as representative of the current difficulties faced by lakhs of migrant labourers who have to stay away from their home states for earning daily meals. From preliminary findings and from statements of the survivors, it has been revealed that despite alerts to wake up from the sleep hearing the sound of the approaching train, they simply couldn’t, only due to extreme tiredness. Nothing can be more unfortunate than this and it perhaps needed a gory incident of this kind to draw attention of those in administration hierarchy regarding the endless woes triggered by the lockdown, a decision of which was impromptu to the core. Despite being absolutely necessary to shield the nation from the lethal coronavirus, the current situation with migrants at their receiving end like no other, will only underline that the four-hour notice was too short a time to make preparations and the sudden announcement has turned out to be the root cause of this unprecedented large-scale human suffering.

There have been more indecisions rather than concrete decisions regarding transportation of these hapless people and confusions are still on. Adequate financial support which is the most-needed action is still to arrive. It’s not sure how many of such tragedies are waiting to be unfolded.

But certainly, it’s not just an accident. It is a collective failure of a welfare nation which was once dreamt by the framers of the Indian Constitution and the nation builders. 

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Kenter Joya Riba

(Managing Editor)
      She is a graduate in Science with post graduation in Sociology from University of Pune. She has been in the media industry for nearly a decade. Before turning to print business, she has been associated with radio and television.
Email: kenterjoyaz@easternsentinel.in / editoreasternsentinel@gmail.com
Phone: 0360-2212313

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