Mumbai: On the one hand, migrant workers who have been stuck in the city for three years, in congested chawls in the city, are now happy that they can finally go home. And on the other, are those who left Mumbai to try their luck in other cities and have been desperately trying to return.
Ram Yadav, 42, finally reached his village in Gorakhpur, UP, on May 29 from Mumbai. Yadav, a daily wager at construction sites in Mumbai, took a Shramik special train to Delhi on May 27 and from there, he reached Gorakhpur by bus. Yadav says the train compartment in which he was, had more than 200 people on board.
"There was hardly any space to sit inside the trains but we somehow managed to accommodate ourselves. The journey was exhausting but we were happy to be on our way home, at last," Yadav says.
Echoing Yadav's sentiments is Sunil Singh, 39, another labourer from Gorakhpur. "Everything in this world comes in exchange for something. There are thousands of labourers like us,stuck in the city and everyone want to go home. We just thought of it as one last adjustment we had to make, in order to reach home," says Singh.
Both Yadav and Singh lived in a chawl located in one of the congested lanes of Kandivli, sharing a room with six others. After being informed by their employers that they would not pay for the latter's accommodation as work was stalled during the lockdown, the workers realised they were on their own and this cramped space was the best they could afford with their meagre income.
Coming home to Mumbai
Meanwhile, for Arjun Dixit, 52, it was agony as he was forced to wait in long queues as there were no taxis or autorickshaws available outside the airport. He was coming home after two long months in New Delhi, where he was stuck following the abrupt announcement of the lockdown.
"The government has been inept at handling the lockdown. There was a low turnout of arrivals, yet we were forced to wait in queues for long hours. There is no taxi or autorickshaw outside the airport. It seems like the state and the Central ministries are not in sync" Dixit told The Free Press Journal.
All scheduled commercial flights were suspended in India since March 25, following the orders of the Centre. But with the resumption of flight operations last week, there has been an influx of passengers who had been so far stranded in other states.
"The government should have given some thought to the policies it framed on the quarantining of passengers. They are stamping every passenger, regardless of the state they are coming from. I came from a state where I was in a green zone and we were in a complete lockdown state. This is just harassment," complained Mrityunjay Dubey, who is self-employed and had just returned from Chandigarh.
