'IN THE arms of a young girl, three years old, is another child that isn’t yet one. She struggles with his weight, slight as he is, trying to feed him out of a bottle. It is a burden that is heavy to bear. But the fight against hunger for children of the Musahari tola in Badbilla village of Bhagalpur has been a daily challenge. In this lockdown, that burden has only become heavier. A microcosm of Bihar, Bhagalpur is the focus of a month-long series by The Indian Express to understand the pandemic’s effects in smalltown India.
'...Initially isolated from the epidemic that has swamped the capital New Delhi and financial center Mumbai, rural areas were exposed when millions of migrant workers who lost their jobs in the cities when the government implemented a strict nationwide lockdown on March 25 went home. The states of Bihar, Assam, Jharkhand, Odisha and Uttar Pradesh received the most number of returning laborers — now they are also witnessing the sharpest rise in new cases in the two weeks to June 8, according to internal government estimates seen by Bloomberg.
'Even as the Supreme Court has asked the Central and state governments to facilitate the return of migrants to their home states in a fortnight’s time, initial data on reverse migration triggered by the national lockdown has shown that more than 67 lakh such people have already reached their home across 116 districts from various urban centres...'
'The woman booked for a social media post questioning the lack of transparency in the government’s response to the gas leak which killed 12 people in Visakhapatnam earlier this month says that she is being targeted for raising basic humanitarian concerns. In a move that is being seen as a blatant attack by the Y.S. Jagan Mohan Reddy government on the right to free speech, the Andhra Pradesh police registered a case against the 60-year-old resident of Guntur on May 19, calling her Facebook post ‘objectionable’...'
'After being promised a higher pay, Anju Bibi (32), a domestic help, left her job at one of the houses in Noida’s Sector 50 and took up work at a house in Prateek Wisteria in Sector 77. Fifteen days later, she was fired by her new employer. “When the lockdown was implemented, I was given Rs 1,600 and told to leave. Now, no one is hiring… we do not know when we will get jobs again,” said Bibi, who used to work at four houses but was only paid her dues by two employers. Bibi lives in Sarfabad Village in Sector 75, where most of the women work as domestic helps in nearby housing societies.
'With Covid cases rising to 208 on Monday, BEST union leaders said social distancing not being followed at depots. BEST Workers' Union leader Shashank Rao said, "Till today, if you visit a depot, like members did at Oshivara on Friday, there is no protection for workers, and hardly any social distancing. Workers are almost rubbing shoulders with each other."...'
'A 46-year-old migrant labourer died on a Shramik Express train on Saturday after having had nothing to eat or drink for 60 hours, a nephew who was accompanying him has alleged. Raveesh Yadav said no food or water was served on the train — in violation of railway regulations — which he and uncle Jokhan Yadav had boarded from Mumbai to travel home to Machhlishahar in Jaunpur district, Uttar Pradesh...'
'On May 8, Mamta, who had boarded a Shramik Special train at Gujarat's Jamnagar went into labour and by the time she got off at her destination in Bihar's Chappra, she had a baby in her arms. A team of doctors along with railway staff supervised Mamta as she delivered a healthy baby girl after her compartment was converted into a makeshift labour room, according to railway official...'
'As many as 7 Indian states have diluted labour laws. The excuse is that the steps have been taken to “boost the economy”. Many more states are expected to follow suit... Even as the COVID19 lockdown has targeted India’s most vulnerable, migrant workers who have been forced to take to walking hundreds of kilometres back home, the Central Govt and many states have used this period to snatch what little legal protection they had at work. There have been some tears some shed, and some stories told of a section of India that Indians, state and society, had invisibilised these workers.
'What has the BJP-led government of Narendra Modi done since 2014 that does not suggest it wishes to destroy the informal economy, also known as the unorganised sector? While the ‘unorganised’ informal economy now accounts for roughly half of India’s GDP – and is shrinking relative to the share of the private and public corporate sector – it accounts for 80-90 % of the workforce. It includes agriculture, despite the fact that land titles are registered, except for plantations, which are regarded as ‘organised’ despite their unravelling workforces.
