'As Prime Minister Narendra Modi announced a national lockdown on March 24 and asked Indians to stay home in order to contain the spread of the coronavirus, it triggered an exodus of migrant workers from the cities. With all work halted and public transport shut, they set off on desperate journeys, aiming to walk back to homes hundreds of kilometres away. But Gaurav Kumar was not one of them.
'...Sangeeta from Sudhama Puri, who worked as a house help, said she is six months pregnant and is concerned over the money required for her child’s birth. “When she [employer] needed me, she used to make so many calls. Now, she hasn’t even asked me how I am managing, whether I am alive or not. She deducted money for 10 days and when I asked for her help, she did not even open the door and treated me like an untouchable,” said Sangeeta. She last went to work on March 22.
'...Ever since businesses took harsh steps due to Covid-19, migrants, constituting a large chunk of the country’s unorganised sector, expressed their frustration through a mass exodus from several cities without caring about the prescribed social distancing norms. With luggage on their shoulders, toddlers in arms and other family members by the side, thousands of them decided to leave the cities they had known as their own, catching the administration unawares...'
'In four days and 200 km of walking, Pravin Kumar, 46, was stopped at every checkpoint. Police checked whether he and 11 others with him had their Aadhaar cards and then waved them on, with an instruction to maintain “social distancing”. So, for their only proper meal in 65 hours, offered by a voluntary organisation, the 12 sat one metre apart in Dehradun on Thursday afternoon. Kumar, employed like the others at the Char Dham Road Project’s Hanuman Chatti site in Uttarkashi, says he knows the value of hygiene in the time of coronavirus.
'Maharashtra Police on Thursday found over 300 migrant workers crammed inside two container trucks which were ostensibly carrying essential commodities from Telangana to Rajasthan. The shocked officials found that the workers, who hailed from Rajasthan, had chosen this surreptitious and dangerous mode of travel as they wanted to return home. Reports of desperate migrant workers heading home amid lockdown on account of coronavirus pandemic are emerging from many parts of the country...'
'It’s been an unusual Monday afternoon for Dharmanath Sapera, who, instead of his usual routine of collecting scrap or working at construction sites, is spending the day worrying about arranging the next day’s meal for his family of nine members... “We went to the chowkri (a place for daily wage labourers to seek work) today, but the police drove us away. They told us to stay at home. If we stay at home, how will we feed our families? We are dependent on our daily income as we don’t have savings,” Sapera, a father of six, told The Indian Express...'
'Some of the flagship employment generation and placement schemes, such as the PM’s Employment Generation Programme and Deendayal Antyodaya Yojana-National Urban Livelihoods Mission, are expected to see a sharp decline in job creation during the current fiscal, according to data tabled in Parliament...'
'The Yogi Adityanath government has said there are nearly 34 lakh unemployed persons in the state now, with the number increasing by over 12.5 lakh from the figure two years ago...'
'At a time when rural distress is rising, food inflation is on a high and the unemployment is the highest in the past four decades, the Narendra Modi-led government has hit where its hurts the poor most – it has slashed allocation for the rural job guarantee scheme – MGNREGA. The scheme was a kind of lifeline for the poorest among the rural population, who are bearing the worst brunt of the agrarian crisis.
'There have been 144,500 job losses in the tourism and handicrafts sector since August 5, 2019... In 2018, Kashmir had received 316,434 tourists between August and December. In 2019, this number fell to 43,059 for the same period, a decline of 86%, showed tourism department data accessed by IndiaSpend. In July 2019, Kashmir received 152,525 tourists but August 2019 saw only 10,130 arrivals and most of them in the first few days of the month. This number further fell to 4,562 in September 2019, and grew to 12,086 in November 2019...'
