Bundelkhand’s returning migrant workers face harsh crackdowns and unsanitary quarantine facilities

Within hours of Prime Minister Narendra Modi announcing a nationwide lockdown to combat the spread of COVID-19, a mass exodus of migrant labourers began across the country and continued for days to come. The threat of hunger, evictions and unemployment created by the lockdown forced hundreds of thousands to move towards their villages from urban centres. Even now, some are on their way home. On 29 March, the ministry of home affairs issued a set of mandates for state governments to deal with the migration, asking them to stop the labourers at the borders. The home ministry also asked states to enforce a 14-day quarantine for those who had crossed state lines and encouraged authorities to take action against those violating the lockdown. By then, accounts of police brutality against the walking migrants had already begun to emerge, and continued to be reported.

The Bundelkhand region in Uttar Pradesh, which covers seven districts, has seen a great influx of migrants coming back from neighbouring states. “The government’s double standards have been made evident,” Shyam Sundar, a teacher who hails from Itaha Devipur village in Bundelkhand’s Chitrakoot district, said. Sundar is the headmaster of a primary school. “It is bringing people in from abroad, but it does not seem to value the lives of labourers from villages.” Today, the average labourer is in crisis. He said he had been in touch with labourers who have returned to many villages in Bundelkhand. They told him “the terrible ordeals they have faced to come here,” he said. “The contractors have not paid them. They don’t have rations or food, and no drinking water. And they have had to travel thousands of kilometres … you only think.” 

Other troubles awaited the returning migrant workers. On 13 and 14 March, there was a terrible hailstorm in Bundelkhand, Sundar said. The entire crop was ruined. “The roof tiles of these poor labourers’s homes, the cement sheets, their huts and their roofs have been completely destroyed,” Sundar said. He added that he had helped the labourers buy plastic sheets to cover their huts, “because there is still a full risk of rain.” He said he understood the plight of the migrant workers as he had worked as one himself, in Gujarat and in Punjab. “The government, the contractors and the factory owners, treat workers like parts of a machine,” he said.

Sundar said he had given up his school’s keys to the panchayat head, so that the government could set up facilities to quarantine the returning workers. Another principal living in Chitrakoot, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, said he had gotten his school cleaned for the same purpose. The second principal was worried about the situation the quarantined workers would face. “You must understand that there is no toilet arrangement nor any fans,” he said. “The condition of these government schools is not right. If the labourers escape coronavirus, then they will be killed by malaria or dengue.” The government had not made any arrangements ahead of time, the second principal said. “The government’s failure is before us.” 

The second principal said that the village pradhan had asked villagers to surround the village and keep a watch. The police had instructed the pradhan to let them know of anyone who returned home. These returning workers were to be examined and immediately quarantined in the school, he said. “If you travel across Chitrakoot, you will see that most homes are locked up. These people go to UP, Punjab and Haryana to work on kilns and are now returning from there. Their houses have been completely broken in the hailstorm.”

Arunoday Singh Parmar, a resident of Chhatarpur district, also expressed deep concern for the returning workers. An engineer who studied in Indore, Parmar is a social worker in the area. He described a shocking incident of police excess. “A woman police officer wrote on the forehead of a young man who was returning home,” he said. He showed me a photograph of the young man. On his forehead was written: “Maine lockdown toda hai, mujhse door rehna”—I breached the lockdown, stay away from me. The young man is 20 years old, and was working as a daily-wage worker in Delhi, Parmar said, before being forced to return home after Modi’s announcement. The government subsequently took action against the woman officer and suspended her from duty. But “do these policewallahs know what his understanding is?” Parmar asked. “They have humiliated him in the eyes of society.” 

Through his work, Parmar told me he had met many returning labourers who had no rations and no money. “Hundreds are still trapped on the way and the district border,” he said. “I feel that more workers will die of hunger than coronavirus.” 

Anil Kashyap, a resident of Jhansi, runs a social-work organisation that works in many villages across Bundelkhand. Kashyap said that in Bundelkhand, even daily meals are a struggle. “We have received hundreds of calls in the last two days. Our people are badly trapped,” he said. “Thousands have lost their direction. Those who were coming to Jhansi have reached Rajasthan. We are hearing that some have died on the way.”

Kashyap said the state and local governments had failed to help these workers. “You think, how a labourer would be coming five hundred to a thousand kilometres on foot, when they have no food, no drinking water, and they are desperate,” he said. Many labourers told him “that the behaviour of the police was not right, and they were being beaten like thieves,” Kashyap said. “Today, two children, one 12 years old and the other 15 years old, have arrived in Jhansi, from Delhi, on cycles”—a distance of 454 kilometres. “Try and understand what their status must be.”

Lokendra Kumar of Chhatarpur district, who is also a social worker, said that he has been delivering rations to people’s homes for three days. “If you see the status of these labourers, he said, “there is no water to drink in their homes. No utensils, no money, the house is broken and there is a danger of rain. The state of the schools they will be kept in now is not good.”

Mukesh Kumar, who runs the Bhima Foundation, an organisation that works in the interest of Dalits in Uttar Pradesh, also said that many labourers were simply stuck on the way. “Their family members are calling us and requesting us to somehow get them home,” Kumar, who is a resident of Jalaun district’s Niwari village, said. “They said they will be at peace if their family member returns home. They do not have rations. They have no money. The factory owner, the contractor, and the government have betrayed them.”

“You will find very few young people in our village,” Vivek Patel, who is from a village in Jalaun and is currently a research student at the University of Allahabad, said. “They mostly go out to work. But now they are coming to the village in the hour of this crisis.” Outside the village, both the head and the police are keeping watch, he said, but these labourers continue to arrive in droves. “There are some people who have reached now,” Patel said. “If you see them, if you think of the troubles they are facing, it shakes you to your core.”