• By: Saiyed Zegham Murtaza
Members of the ruling party BJP, its allies in media boardrooms and in the newsrooms have tossed a very important question regarding the huge internal displacement caused by the Covid-19 situations. They are asking, why people want to go home and why did the left their homes to create burdens on the cities if they had better lives in villages.
Interesting and very knowledgeable question, had it been asked by an illiterate and not for those at the help of policy making. Let us start with, “why people want to go home”? Answer is, they felt they will be unable to sustain in the cities as the government has announced that Corona is here to stay and people should learn to live with it. Most of them have no work amid un-ending lock down, no ration supplies to sustain and no savings to pay the rentals for their homes.
Those in petty class four jobs have bigger worries. They will either lose their job or they will have to accept the pay cuts. Working for more hours with less pay will only leave them stressed. They will not be able to pay for their house, electricity, food and other daily needs. These people have lost the hope in the system and they know, if they stay for longer period in the city, conditions will only worsen.
Now, come to the question, “why they left their homes if they can’t sustain here”? Surely, people leave their homes for better life, similarly the kids of middle and upper middle class leave for USA, UK, Canada and Australia. It is not a thing that life in village is not self-sufficed. I know many villages, including mine, where quality of life is better them most of the towns in India. Still people want to improve. Village cannot provide jobs to all or they cannot provide better education with limited resources. So, the aspirations and opportunities pull the people towards the cities.
Another issue is of the agrarian crisis. For last 8-10 years agriculture is a loss-making venture. With rising input costs and fixed government mandated purchase price, farmers cannot even make minimum profits. Even their own labour, which the government never considers a paid activity, goes in vain. A full family can hardly earn what is less then a minimum daily wage. So, leaving a caretaker behind, most of the males, specially the youth leave for jobs to get some money back home.
And lastly, the issue is related to the failure of the present government. Agriculture has some fixed duties and fixed duration tasks. Once you sow a seed, if there is no danger of thieves and cattle, one person is enough to take care of the field till the harvesting time comes. During the 90’s riding on the success of market reforms many villagers got the opportunity to get extra income from petty jobs. Many of them make seasonal returns to sow the seeds and to harvest. For the rest of the time they work as security guards, packaging personals, delivery boys, office boys and small vendors in the nearby town and cities.
Poor economic policies, specially the demonetisation and poor implementation of GST has left most of them jobless or workless. Many of them returned home. Those who chose to struggle, tried their best to sustain. For the last two years, they have faced all the troubles, still they had some home. Now, they are returning because they have lost their hopes. They feel that villages and their family at home are still in position to fulfil their minimum needs.
Government may boast regularising all the trades and maximising their earnings through direct taxes, but this has forced the closures of many entrepreneurship which failed to comply with filing of regular returns and paying the heavy taxes. Government never tried to learn the reason behind or the relation between the meteoritic rise in the number of e-rickshaw pullers, the number of petty crimes and demolition of the unorganised sector. It’s the time for introspection and not for throwing the questions.
Interestingly, the major problem with the people in government that they are not allowed to act. Centralisation of power has left them all in the same position the labourers are. Either they should ask question to the dead opposition, the poor labourers, the struggling farmers and the jobless people or they themselves will be jobless. They should be seen working without work or their masters will ensure their return to their own villages.
Author can be reached at visionb@gmail com
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