-The Indian Express As the national lockdown entered its second week, The Indian Express travelled across four states to track this unprecedented exodus, examine what social distancing and isolation means in towns and villages off camera and off the highway — and what could await the first COVID-19 patients here. Morena (Madhya Pradesh): They built homes, offices, even cities. They worked in technology companies. They cooked the food we ate, cleaned the...
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Gujarat: Rushed back to village, but don’t know what we will do here, say migrant labourers -Aishwarya Mohanty
-The Indian Express With small land-holdings, hilly terrains, water scarcity and parched lands, farming is neither profitable nor a dependable source of income in many villages. Dahod: The ardous journey is not just what migrant labourers, who are returning in thousands from cities to their villages amid an unprecedented nation wide lockdown in view of the coronavirus pandemic, are facing. Deeper economic uncertainties stare at many of them back in their villages. Sukhlal...
More »Last call of man who died walking: Lene aa sakte ho toh aa jao -Dipankar Ghose
-The Indian Express Ranveer was one among the countless migrant workers walking home from big cities to their villages, where new rules of isolation and quarantine await. And his story is emblematic of their plight, and the trauma of waiting families. Morena (Madhya Pradesh): The audio file is 42 seconds long. On one end is a loud, animated voice. Screaming, beseeching. “Ask someone to give you a lift till Morena. Hello? Hello?”...
More »Coping with coronavirus: Big challenge for India’s 37%— ‘internal migrants’ -Seema Chishti
-The Indian Express Jagdish (22), from Madhya Pradesh, does a mason’s work and is worried that even if the contractor gives money, that would be a loan, not relief. “It would be a very big government school when built,” says Kaushalendra Trivedi (45), a recent migrant from Gorakhpur, employed as a guard in Uttam Nagar in the national capital’s Rajkiya Sarvodaya Bal Vidyalaya. His family is five kilometres away in a makeshift...
More »Anxiety In MP, Punjab: Lockdown puts question mark on wheat procurement -Milind Ghatwai & Anju Agnihotri Chaba
-The Indian Express Nearly 19 lakh farmers had registered themselves on the MP government’s e-Uparjan procurement portal between February 1 and 28. Bhopal, Jalandhar: First it was over two weeks of political uncertainty and now it is the 21-day lockdown to combat COVID-19 that is giving anxious moments to the lakhs of wheat growers in Madhya Pradesh. Procurement of their produce —farmers in the state have sown a record 79.68 lakh hectares under...
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