Just days ago, Hari Prasad, who started to walk back home to Andhra Pradesh from Bengaluru, died after completing an arduous journey of almost 120 km. The 26-year-old is not an aberration but part of the migrant crisis that seems to be weighing heavy on society's conscience on May Day, which is meant to celebrate the rights of labourers. Be it the RSS affiliate Bharatiya Mazdoor Sangh or its ideological opponent, the Left-affiliated CITU, both accept the migrant worker crisis is not just an economic issue but a humanitarian concern.
"Of course, it is ironic. The day was meant to celebrate the right of the labour force to work (only) for 8 hours. And here we have hundreds and thousands of them, stuck in another state. While many have lost their jobs, there are quite a few who are finding it tough to keep themselves well fed through this crisis," CITU chief Tapan Sen told .
Recalling reading about a girl who too died on the walk back home, Sen holds that this not just dampens the mood of the day but also brings all to question whether the lockdown could have been well-managed. "How can you give just a 3 hours notice and expect this most vulnerable section to understand?" he asks, referring to the announcement of the lockdown in March.
While the Bharatiya Mazdoor Sangh does not celebrate May 1 as the labour Day, it wants trains, like the one run between Telangana and Jharkhand to ply non-stop, with the intention to move more migrant workers and get them home faster.
Pawan Kumar of the BMS claims that the core of their plight is economic in nature. "I urge the government to reopen a few businesses. For instance, if bidi business is reopened, it will immediately give economic sustenance to 1 crore people and many of them may not even need to travel back," he said.
Congress leader Abhishek Manu Singhvi, meanwhile, has hit out at the Centre's guidelines for state governments to move the massive migrant population through buses.
"Rajasthan says they have some 2.5 lakh migrant labourers, Kerala has 4 lakh, Punjab 4 lakh, Odisha 7 lakh, Assam has 1.5 lakh migrant labourers stuck in different parts of the country," he noted, adding that "it will take an excruciatingly long time to move them in buses alone".
To meet the Centre's social distancing concerns, the BMS has suggested to the Union Home Ministry that rather than carrying 72 passengers in each bogey, the government may consider carrying just 30 which will ensure they are maintaining distance from each other while travelling. This, the BMS insists, will help the migrant laborers who have faced uncertainty for more than a month reach home faster.
Hari Prasad is not alone. There are hundreds and thousands who continue to walk. Some of them have died in their pursuit to reach home. Early April, another migrant worker reportedly died while resting on the way back home - a 500 km trip. The lucky majority who survived battled the scarcity of food and clean drinking water and must thank the Good Samaritans who helped them. On May Day, they don't care about their rights but want to get home safe.
And India's two ideologically opposed trade unions are in agreement that they deserve to go home and faster.
( With inputs from IANS )