Bihar is preparing for the arrival of migrants in large numbers after chief minister Nitish Kumar asked them to return home at the earliest if they wished. Labour department officials said they will map the returnees and put them in quarantine centres like the previous year when around 2.5 million migrant workers returned to the state after announcement of a nationwide lockdown after Covid-19 pandemic outbreak.
“With the chief minister issuing an appeal, it is likely to have an impact and migrants may start returning in large numbers, as the situation is turning worse in Delhi, Maharashtra and other parts, where most of them go for livelihood,” said Bihar labour minister Jibesh Mishra, adding the disaster management department (DMD) has already swung into action..
He said “not more than 250,000 migrants may have returned so far”, but this could gather “momentum” following the CM’s appeal.
With the number of Covid-19 active cases continuing to maintain an alarmingly high trend in the last one month with record number of infections getting reported almost every day, CM’s appeal to migrants to return “early” is being viewed as a hint of tougher measures in the days to come if the situation fails to improve.
“I have asked the labour enforcement officers (LEOs) to keep track of migrants’ flow at the block level. The old system of putting the migrants in the quarantine centres will be revived to check the spread in the rural areas. The government has already announced that quarantine centres will work at the sub division level. Depending on the flow, it may also be planned at the block level,” said Mishra.
The minister said a toll-free number—18003456138 was set up to provide information to the migrants. He added that some migrants were reaching railway stations and bus stops in the state and officials will start “mapping” their return.
However, opposition parties were not convinced that the state was ready to handle the situation. RJD MP Manoj Jha described CM’s appeal as “empty rhetorical statement” adding it lacked “credibility and substance”.
“Contrary to his wishes, the public memory is not that short. The state failed its own people with either poor arrangements or nothing at all at quarantine centres last year. The fudging and manipulation of Covid testing data is known to the whole world. Besides, the recent images of absolute dearth of life saving medicines as well as oxygen is a report card of a CM who loves to live in a make believe world shaped by his trusted bureaucrats,” Jha added.
Another RJD leader and MLA, Lalit Yadav claimed that even RT-PCR tests were not happening smoothly in the state and patients were struggling for beds and it was difficult to believe the CM in these circumstances. “There is neither any quarantine centre nor any system in place,” he added.
Last year, a sea of migrants arrived at border districts of Nawada, Gaya, Kaimur, Banka, Gopalganj, Siwan and Champaran, mainly from Delhi, UP, West Bengal, Maharashtra, Haryana, Punjab, Chhattisgarh, Orisha, Gujarat and Andhra Pradesh. The government estimate put their number at around 2.5 million- around 1.5 million returned by special trains and another million by buses and other modes of transport.
Social analyst DM Diwakar said if the migrants chose to return, it could pose a challenge to the government on multiple fronts.
“The pandemic has aggravated the rate of unemployment and created an unprecedented situation of forced return of migrants to their native states. Now a repeat could be more difficult,” he said.
Citing a 2020 report ‘Mapping Inequality in Bihar” by AN Sinha Institute of Social Studies and Oxfam India, he said despite double digit growth, Bihar remains at the bottom in terms of development indicators, grappling with land, assets and income inequality, low productivity, limited opportunities of decent work and low demographic development with inter-state and inter-district disparities.
