Muffled cries of ‘trying to be productive’ and the head banging stress of ‘work from home’ are the hot potatoes at the moment while there’s a solid existence of endless looping of deficit budget at homes and families migrating on foot for survival. India once again is living the new normal. In a pandemic, it’s obvious for most of the vulnerable sections of a society to be sledge-hammered to all the thinning layers of survival we are unaware of.
Lakhs of the country’s migrant workers are in distress. These are the people who have lost their jobs, have been left stranded with no wages, shelter or food since the lockdown was imposed. The only place they can go to is home and are resorting to walking or cycling hundreds of miles. The tragic part of this reverse migration is that laborers are losing lives. Instead of the coronavirus infection, migrants are dying from exhaustion, hunger or accidents at a distance.
Imlilemba Jamir
Class 12
Tetso College