India’s migrant workers make the long journey home
India’s migrant workers head home by train and on foot as the country prepares to unlock, and Singapore readies to leave its circuit breaker.
NEW DELHI, Sunday 31 May.—India’s migrant workers have spent May going home, by special train and, for many, on foot.
On 1 May the Home Ministry allowed special trains for stranded workers. The first Shramik Special left Lingampalli in Telangana for Hatia in Jharkhand at 4.50 am that day, carrying over 1,200 people.
On 8 May, migrant workers sleeping on a railway track near Aurangabad were crushed to death by a train. “These unfortunate people were hungry for two months without any clarity on their future,” one Indian wrote on Reddit that day.
These unfortunate people were hungry for two months without any clarity on their futurezbrshk
On 22 May more than 3,000 workers with confirmed reservations gathered at a ground in Kandivali, Mumbai, only to hear that their two trains to Uttar Pradesh had been cancelled. “The passengers were angry when they heard the trains were cancelled. But we pacified them and said alternative arrangements would be made,” said Senior Police Inspector Nitin Pandkule.
Some of the trains that do run have been slow. Pintu Alam, a tailor, left Delhi on 23 May with his wife and two sons; the train took 39 hours to reach Patna, and temperatures passed 40 degrees, The Telegraph reported. His four-year-old son, Mohammad Irshad, died on the journey. “We checked, and found that he was no more. We cried and screamed. I guess he died of hunger and heat,” he said.
Others never found a train. Rajesh Chouhan left Bengaluru on 12 May with his nephew and nine other migrants and walked and hitchhiked for 10 days to his village in Uttar Pradesh, near the Nepal border. “We were beaten many times. Just because we are poor, doesn’t mean we can’t feel pain,” he told CNN.
The Tribune (India), May 2 · Reddit (r/india), May 8 · The Tribune (Tribune News Service), May 22 · The Wire (quoting The Telegraph), May 27 · CNN (via KVIA), May 31