Disaster Diary - 1 / A letter to a friend

Dear …,

The video you've sent is chilling. I couldn’t watch it for beyond maybe 30 seconds. Still, thanks for sharing. We need to keep reminding ourselves.

In India today, crores of migrant labourers have no job, most of them, no shelter either. They are honest citizens who make their living through hard work, they aren’t beggars. Today, they are starving. Many of them have survived the last 48 days because of doles given out by governments, and mostly, NGOs. Human dignity is a fancy word in Indian today, like caviar or opera; it has no place on the ground.

As I write this in the comfort of my study and the security of three meals a day etc., a huge number of people, including children, women with a baby in arms and a sack on their head, are walking hundreds of miles. The summer is on; the temperature 40+ everywhere. Most of them hungry. Many have been avoiding highways and taking unpaved routes. It is no joy to walk on the sharp stones on railway tracks. Yet, many prefer the precarious path because their fucking protectors, the police, might beat them up if they are visible. Last night, I watched NDTV’s Uma Sudhir showing us some people who had walked from Hussainabad in Nalgonda district to Secunderabad in the hope of catching a train to Jharkhand. There was none. The Telangana chief minister struts about the country in a private aircraft, but his police packed off the labourers in a rickety bus back to Hussainabad. Far away, near Agra, Alok Pandey interviewed a migrant worker. He had already walked 200 kilometres from Delhi, but his home in Chhapra in Bihar was still over 800 kilometres away. The small man showed the last plastic bottle of water he was carrying and said he had Rs.10 on him. When Pandey asked him why he had begun the journey despite all the risks involved, he broke down.

These humans try to make themselves invisible, but they are not completely, at least to our eyes, thanks to journalists like Alok Pandey and Uma Sudhir. But they are certainly invisible to our conscience. We think of them only when our placid sense of right and wrong is punctured by an egregious tragedy, like a goods train running over 14 of them. If death is less telegenic, like say, two men on cycle being crushed by a car, or some other wretched of the earth simply dropping dead in exhaustion or dehydration, should we lose our sleep?

Yesterday, I read an article in the Hindu which puts the number of migrant workers in India at 13 crores. A veteran journalist, Prem Shankar Jha, estimates the number at 10 crores. Let’s put the number in some kind of perspective. Among the 235 countries in the world, only 14 have a population over 10 crores.

Imagine. The entire population of Mexico, Egypt, UK, or Vietnam, or the combined population of Germany and France has no food, no income, no roof over their head, and many of them are on the road struggling under a pitiless sun, with empty pockets and emptier stomachs. They had no food where they had begun from, they may not have any food if at all they reach their destination. But they will have the comfort of being close to the people they love.

Such a heartless government, such heartless rulers. Such a craven judiciary which does everything they can to please the political executive. But most importantly, such a hopelessly stupid and selfish rest of the country that doesn’t give a shit when others are dying a slow, systematic, man-made death.

I take no moral high ground. You and I are a part of the problem.

12 May 2020