The authorities have treated migrant labour like animals. They have been left to fend for themselves in matters of shelter and food, if they decided to stay put in the cities, or food and transport, if they decided to return to their native villages.

Various NGOs and religious bodies, with their limitations of budget and size given the magnitude of the crisis, have come forward to help. But the responses of the governments have been found wanting. Those migrants who have returned to the villages will require considerable help from the state. This intervention will need to be both for employment and foodgrains. It was the lack of opportunities in the villages that made these migrants head out to the cities in search of jobs.

The only candidate for employment that suggests itself readily is MNREGA. This will need to be scaled up ~ after all, it was conceived as a means of providing some income in the “off season”. But now, in rural India, there are people with no source of income (except a paltry share in their small land holdings). It is ironical that just a few months ago, the Prime Minister had made fun of this scheme in Parliament, with his party members joining in gleefully.

He had said that MNREGA is the embodiment of the failure of previous governments to provide decent jobs. This point is unexceptionable. But MNREGA is the only rural safety net available, given the failure of the governments, past and present, to provide quality jobs. The irony of falling back on MNREGA, the object of recent derision, is compounded when this government inserted advertisements in English-language dailies proclaiming its desire to make funds available for MNREGA (surely the intended recipients do not read these newspapers).

The Finance Minister’s package for the migrants (announced on June 18) has too much detail in it. When a public works programme is to be executed, too much detailing of the prescribed output is a distraction. What does the transfer of incomes to the needy returning migrant have to do with the laying of fiber optic cables? It can be that this is another attempt at repackaging existing schemes.

Finally, two other points deserve some analysis. First, was the lockdown itself a mistake? Some leading economists (like Kaushik Basu), argue that a lot of people in India die from malaria, TB, and in traffic accidents, then why have a lockdown for corona? At one level there is merit in this, in that there are other killers around, and in a poor country people are inured to death. But the argument is flawed in that none of the causes of death mentioned above are infectious (or as infectious) as Covid-19 is. Covid-19 was going to hit the poor disproportionately because of the impossibility of social distancing, lack of hygiene (no availability of soap, water etc.) and, lack of access to reasonable quality healthcare.

This is also true of an argument put forward by Debraj Ray and S Subramanian, where they argue against a lockdown for all, saying that young, since they were not the group facing the maximum risk, could have been allowed to work. The problem with this argument is that the Corona virus, unlike say TB, is a recent entrant and we do not know who it will strike, with any certainty. The cost, in terms of people dying in the transition to acquiring herd immunity, could be significant. Thus, a lockdown was called for; where India failed was in managing it. Second, in the light of the disinclination of the Indian state to fulfil its minimal administrative duty, people have wondered if this is curtains for ruralurban migration in India.

Surely no returning worker would want to be in situation where a similar trauma could be repeated? That is, once bitten twice shy. Economists like Maitreesh Ghatak have argued that in the presence of risk aversion rural-urban migration would be reduced to a trickle. Given the dependence of the urban economy on migrant labour, the wages for unskilled and low skilled workers will rise. Presumably, the rise would be insufficient to elicit a renewed flow from rural areas, overcoming the memories of the exodus back to the village.

Against this, let us not forget that over the years, people have migrated to the cities precisely because economic activity in the rural areas is insufficient to provide a decent standard of living. As mentioned above, a significant proportion of these migrants lived in the cities in squalor ~ sleeping on the streets, or in dormitories. In addition to the pure livelihood issue in the rural areas is the poor quality of the supply of local public goods.

These include education, law and order and caste oppression. If the migrant has acquired some skills, it is unlikely that there will be a demand for that in a small primitive rural market. My belief is that for the bulk of the returning migrants, poverty will make them go back to the cities. For some the scars of what they encountered while fleeing the lockdown will be the defining consideration; but others will be forced by lack of opportunities to venture out of the countryside.

(Concluded)

(The writer is former Director and Professor of Economics, Delhi School of Economics)