Fearing 2020 rerun, thousands of migrant workers head home

New Delhi: Within hours of Delhi announcing a weeklong lockdown to tackle the second Covid surge, and despite an appeal from Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal, a rerun of last year played out at the national Capital's bus terminals and railway stations with hundreds of migrant workers lining up to head home.

In March last year, when Prime Minister Narendra Modi had announced a 21-day lockdown to handle the Coronavirus crisis, lakhs of migrants living in bigger cities were caught unprepared.

As all modes of transport were suspended, they had started walking toward their homes, with many dying on the way. It was only in May that the Centre started running special trains for them.

Almost a year later, after Kejriwal announced a lockdown on Monday, nearly one lakh people left the National Capital Region, most to go back to UP and Bihar. The Delhi Chief Minister's appeals to the workers to stay back went unheard. He promised that his government would be taking care of them. He had even made sure that his address announcing the lockdown mentioned the plight of these workers.

Haryana Chief Minister Manohar Lal Khattar also spoke on Tuesday and asked migrant workers in the state to not return and stay put.

In Delhi, LG Anil Baijal on Tuesday said migrant workers were the people who had built the city and that the Capital was as much theirs as anybody else's.

Significantly, the Delhi government has ordered a slew of measures to care for the migrant workers' needs on Tuesday even as thousands lined up outside the Old Delhi and New Delhi railway stations and different ISBTs to head home.

A record 28,395 Covid cases and 277 deaths marked the aggravation of the pandemic situation in Delhi on Tuesday as the positivity rate shot up to 32.82 per cent — meaning every third sample came out positive — amid a "serious oxygen crisis" unfolding in the city.

At the Anand Vihar Inter State Bus Terminal, a large crowd of migrants gathered with bags packed, their destinations mostly Bihar, Jharkhand and Uttar Pradesh. The chorus: "We don't want to be stranded again."

Many said they were particularly wary after last year's experience when they suddenly found themselves out of jobs and were forced to stand in long queues just to get food for their families. Last year, Delhi and Mumbai had witnessed a massive exodus of migrant workers after the national lockdown was enforced in March. In Delhi, with all forms of transport off the road, thousands started walking back, with the numbers peaking in the first week of April. Subsequently, industrial units and construction sites lay vacant for months, with most workers returning only towards the end of the year.

Another prolonged lockdown, they said, could again set them back severely.With agency inputs