THE TREK BACK HOME

DEFINITION OF HOME

• Living away from home is never easy.
• A home is not made of brick and mortar, certainly not tin or planks of wood.
• It is where one finds comfort, nurtures relationships, and raises a family.
• It gives sanctuary from daily struggles.

An extension of one’s identity, it provides us a sense of belonging.

• A place of tranquillity and serenity, it is where one longs to be when not there.
• This can only be where one’s family, friends and community reside, not an inhospitable, overcrowded room with strangers.
• Not surprisingly, hungry migrant workers were determined to trudge hundreds of kilometres to reach “home” in their village.

CONDITION IN ‘NORMAL’ TIMES

• The current plight of migrant workers during the lockdown should become an occasion to reflect on their abysmal condition in “normal” times.
• Many “contractual labourers” rarely see a written contract.
• A minimum, regular wage per month is legally required but seldom paid.
• Many do not receive wages for months, and at the end of the season when they are finally paid it is often less than what was agreed.

• Lack of regular wages means that workers either borrow from employers or from local moneylenders.
• This renders them even more financially vulnerable because of indebtedness.
• Quite often they work long hours, between 10 and 13 hours a day, live in tents or makeshift shanties without access to potable water, toilets, and electricity.
• I doubt if they are ever fully protected from the elements.
• Many of them do not have a kitchen and are forced to eat from local street vendors who live in similar conditions.

Under such dire working and living circumstances, is it a surprise that under an unexpected lockdown they all wish to return to their original homes?

• For it is not feelings of individuals but enduring collective sentiment crystallised around a stable course of action by public agencies that really matter.
• Effective public policies are indispensable.
• Gurudwaras and non-governmental organisations may complement its efforts to feed the hungry, but it remains the prime duty of the state to do so.

WORK, HOME AND DIGNITY

• In short, a regime of social policy, pivotal for a minimal welfare state must be installed to address the basic needs of all Indian citizens, not only during pandemics but for all times, to meet any contingency.
• Socioeconomic rights, including the right to work, have long been part of our Directive Principles of State Policy.
• By enacting the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act law in 2005, the Indian Parliament had set in motion a process that makes a specific and significant welfare provision constitutive of the very idea of citizenship.
• To be a citizen of a polity is to be entitled to an opportunity to work.
• Now, manual work in extremely hot conditions on parched terrain is an energy-draining, back-breaking chore, not quite a source of self-realisation central to the emancipatory vision of Gandhi, Hegel or Marx. And yet, even such paid manual labour is a far cry from receiving charity.

• There is a sense in which any voluntary work, no matter how arduous, quietly uplifts and enhances dignity and basic self-respect — a point gracefully underscored by a group of painters (migrant labour) in Palsana, Sikar in Rajasthan, when they chose to give a fresh coat of paint to an entire school building in return for the shelter provided to them during lockdown.

• Our Directive Principles focus on others — proper housing, for instance.
• While no state can build a home — which needs personal care and must be our own handiwork — the right to housing can certainly be guaranteed for it is implicit in the article enjoining the state to provide a decent standard of living.

MULTIPLE DEPRIVATIONS

• However, such social policies will not be forthcoming unless we, who make these policies, stopped viewing the poor as sub-human.
• This is a controversial statement and requires some explanation.
• I believe the best of us carry the image of the poor as labouring creatures with basic material needs who beget children.
• They suffer when deprived of these material needs.

Our humanity lies in empathetically acknowledging this suffering.

• This, however, is not an image that we have of ourselves.
• We have more complex social, cultural, political and even spiritual needs.
• We need quality time with our children, and leisure for ourselves; companionship and friendship, a flourishing social life; music, literature, art, poetry; time to fulfil our obligations in the public domain.
• And of course, we need our privacy, hours of solitude, space for self-reflection.
• Our suffering too is different: we have anxieties and phobias, inner turmoil, loss of a sense of self.