There are some situations in this country that need to assume the form of a procession that could take place on the streets before they are realised and understood. The march, on foot, aired on media channels, of tens of thousands of migrant workers from the megacity of Delhi and from other metropolitan cities to their native villages, located many hundreds of kilometres away, was a frightfully disturbing sight. Just as the tiniest virus had brought the entire world to a screeching halt, the poorest of the Indian urban poor, surviving on daily wages to buy food and rent, and eking out a living in tiny hovels, seriously compromised the national lockdown.
Clearly, the INR 1.7 lakh crore
relief package, announced by the Finance Minister of India, that assured a well-designed safety net comprising free cereals, free cooking gas and direct cash transfers had not appeared sufficiently convincing to the urban poor. Nor had some well-endowed people taken the words of the Prime Minister seriously enough to come to the rescue and aid of the poor, support them with their salaries and with humanitarian aid. Instead, many property owners exhibited the most base and brutish side of their characters by evicting tenants that were doctors and health workers, for fear that they will bring COVID19 to the doorsteps of the landlords. Additionally, as evidence has emerged, they began harassing the out-of-work daily wage tenants to cough up their rent.
The urban poor were also convinced that distant home was the best means of survival for them and their families.
In the surcharged situation, as has been witnessed earlier, rumour-mongering mills operated with gay abandon. The situation was aggravated by political one-upmanship, when Delhi Transport Corporation buses were seen carrying migrants to the borders of Delhi. Additionally, the Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister stepped in and assured a thousand buses to take migrants home. This fed the hope of the urban migrants that there was transport available to reach them to their native villages. The urban poor were also convinced that distant home was the best means of survival for them and their families. “The landlord started harassing us for rent,” one of the migrant workers
reported, “and refused to give us groceries on credit. We decided it would be better to go home — at least we will get food and shelter.” Hence, they chose to walk a treacherous distance along with their women and children.
The plight of the urban poor was noted by the Prime Minister. In his nation-wide address on COVID19, he apologised for the hardships people and especially the poor had been made to suffer. However, he maintained that “such strong measures were absolutely necessary since he had no other way for stopping the spread of the virus.” Having declared the lockdown, Government had no option but to further tighten the state and district borders. This necessitated stopping the migrants at the point that they had reached and arrange for their living in the vicinity itself. It was recognised that if the migrants travelled to their villages and home towns, they could become the primary virus carriers to a huge number of settlements. This would defeat the very purpose that was behind the national lockdown.
Having declared the lockdown, Government had no option but to further tighten the state and district borders.
Once the migrants were on the roads, the central and state governments scurried to control the situation. Despite the magnitude of the problem, it is creditable that authorities were able to size up the situation and take necessary action. The Supreme Court was
apprised by the Solicitor General that by the end of March 2020, there was no migrant worker on the road and the exodus had been stopped. The migrants, numbering nearly 230,000 were taken to the nearest of the more than two thousand available shelters where they were being provided food.
Three lessons need to be learnt from the situation described above. Firstly, in a pandemic of this order, it is evident that the war cannot be won by governments alone. While governments exhort, advise and regulate as well as take steps to strengthen and reorient the national health architecture by expanding healthcare systems, enhancing capacity of health staff and upscaling lab testing facilities, a very high degree of civic discipline is called for by the population. While by and large citizens have shown exemplary courage and restraint, the best kind of behaviour has not been observed by some citizens, including those infected or suspected to be infected. There have been cases of non-disclosure of travel history, disappearance from quarantine facilities, flouting of instructions on self-quarantine and general lack of observance of advisories in regard to non-congregation and social distancing. Individual, community and religious preferences in many instances have totally discarded the overall national goal of defeating the virus. The lockdown is a tough examination that the nation must pass. Depending on how people behave and how the virus spreads, governments would decide their future course of action. If the disease enters a more virulent phase and spreads far and deep, there would be no ground to complain if the citizen’s rights of movement, employment and social discourse get more seriously dented.
It is clearly surprising that even a substantive relief package, aimed almost entirely at the poor, failed to convince the migrants that they had no reason to worry on account of food and shelter.
The second is that normal communication strategies employed by governments for the most underprivileged, poorly educated, ill-informed and gullible urban poor were found seriously wanting. A more robust and detailed communication methodology that reached the urban poor and that commanded greater faith than those who misled them was the need of the hour. A much greater effort through a door-to-door messaging strategy and the extensive use of the Hindi media were necessary. The municipal staff, supervising functions of unauthorised colonies coupled with citizens groups, if properly tasked, would have proved handy in relation to the matter of rent. It is clearly surprising that even a substantive relief package, aimed almost entirely at the poor, failed to convince the migrants that they had no reason to worry on account of food and shelter. In this regard, it would be good for governments to analyse how the market promotes the products it launches.
A third factor that the virus has emphasised is that overcrowding in cities is not advisable. It is becoming more than evident that for the future, for multiple reasons including situations such as COVID19, promoting hyper-human-densities in Indian cities is highly inadvisable. The latest positive cases in areas such as Dharavi are a sinister reminder that the scale of the pandemic in densely packed slums may completely spiral out of control. Space, then, would emerge as a primary constraint in quarantining citizens, apart from shortages of hospitals, equipment and manpower. Self-quarantine itself may not be possible in India’s large cities where adequate housing is in short supply and many families are forced to make do with 80 to 150 square feet of residential space, sometimes taking turns to sleep. Quite clearly, concepts such as social distancing do not de facto apply in slums.
The problem narrated above will, over time, grow in size, as India urbanises. More and more of rural poor will shift into cities in search of informal employment. A whole new strategy on urbanisation, therefore, that works against hyper densities and discards outdated land use policies and rent laws may have to be pressed into service. They would have to be tailored to the needs of the urban poor so that they can lead a reasonably human existence. These aspects of mega cities have been brushed under the carpet for far too long. It would be sad if we wake up only when a situation as grim as the one we are facing comes and knocks at our doors. Any further neglect of the issues impacting the urban poor will repeatedly come back to haunt us.
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