Protests Held Against Modi’s ‘Package’ and Continuing Brutal Deaths of Migrants on Roads

· Government Betrayal of Country in the Name of Corona Lockdown
· Why this Mockery, Fraudulence and Deception in the name of a Package ?
· How Does Indiscriminate Privatisation and FDI fight Corona or Achieve Self-reliance?
· Why Are Migrant Workers Left to Die on Roads?
· Why Quarantine Centers becoming Torture Chambers for inmates?

The protests on 19 May raised three points prominently. The Prime Minister in his address on 12 May said that the Corona crisis should be converted into an opportunity. Indeed, it is becoming clear how he is doing that. The subsequent unveiling of the package by the Finance Minister shows us that huge opportunities are going to be given to the corporate and rich industrialists by snatching away whatever rights workers had won after decades of hard struggle and sacrifice. Inherent in their ‘Self-reliant India’ is open facilitation of privatization and murder of democratic processes. FDI in Defence has been increased to 74% and it will be implemented in coal mining as well. Airports will be sold. All this is being done in the name of ‘relief package’.

How many more lives will be lost in this drive for so-called ‘Self-reliant India’! Already more than 150 migrant workers have died untimely deaths. Lakhs are still walking home. The governments have shaken off their responsibilities. But the country will never forget the still-continuing deaths of migrant workers and will never forgive the dictatorial Modi government which created this cruel situation of endless deaths.

All over the country the quarantine centers are nothing short of torture-houses. At least 3 persons have died so far in various quarantine centers in Bihar due to appalling maladministration and administrative negligence. People have been crammed into these centers like animals. Each center houses many more people above its capacity. There are no proper arrangements for either food or sleeping. People have to struggle even to get drinking water and toilets.

The CPIML has also reiterated the following demands during these protests:

• immediate and direct financial relief from the Central and State governments for agrarian workers, farmers, small traders and other working classes;
• Rs 10,000 Lockdown Allowance for all;
• 200 days’ work and Rs 500 daily wage in MNREGA;
• employment generation for all;
• complete loan waiver for farmers;
• crop loss compensation for farmers;
• Rs 20 lakhs for the families of each worker killed due to Lockdown-induced tragedies.

In Bihar, activists who protested at the State office included State Secretary Kunal, leader of CPIML Legislative Party MLA Mahboob Alam, AIPWA State President Saroj Chaube, while Kisan Mahasabha General Secretary Rajaram Singh and senior leader KD Yadav held dharnas at their homes. Comrade Kunal said that the Central government is selling the country and its resources in the name of ‘relief package’. Workers are being left to suffer and die while rights are being snatched away and privatization is being facilitated in every sector.

MLA Mahboob Alam said that the country will never forgive PM Modi for the present distress caused to workers by his government. Quarantine Centers in Bihar have become torture chambers and centers for loot. Contrary to governmental claims, many people have died at these centers. The government is not making arrangements for bringing back migrant workers stranded in far-away places despite our repeated applications and requests.

Leaders and activists from CPIML, AIPWA, Tempo Union, AICCTU, AISA, RYA, Asangathit Kamgaar Mazdoor Mahasangh, and other organizations held dharna protests at various places across Bihar.

Government’s Cruelty: Hungry Desperate People are on the Roads

The CPIML Uttar Pradesh State Secretary Sudhakar Yadav has said that the sight of lakhs of hungry and desperate migrant workers walking home with women and children in scorching heat on the roads in the country is proof not only of the Modi government’s cruelty, insensitivity and inhumanity, but also raises a huge question mark on its management skills and foresight in dealing with the pandemic. The largest migration in the country since independence has resulted in a government-induced disaster. The spate of workers desperately returning home after losing their livelihoods, dying on the roads due to accidents and hunger, being beaten up by the police, is a horrific indicator of the heartlessness and policy failure as well as a paradigm shift in the Modi rule.

Why Not Sufficient Transport for Workers?

He said that before announcing a countrywide Lockdown with just 4 hours’ advance notice, the Modi government should have anticipated these situations and planned the solutions. If the life situations of migrant workers and their families had been even minimally bearable, they would not have decided to walk thousands of kilometers during with every possibility of losing their lives. If the governments had so wished, they could have made arrangements for buses and trains for their safe return home. But the governments did not do this.

Such special trains are being run for everyone on a first-come first-served basis, but illogical conditions have been put for migrant workers such as registration, permission from the migration-State as well as the home-State. Why is sufficient transportation not being arranged for all workers who wish to go home?

Government Using the Moment of Crisis as an Opportunity to Snatch Away Workers’ Legal Rights

But instead of doing this bare minimum for the workers, governments are using this moment of pandemic and humanitarian crisis to snatch away workers’ rights. In one fell swoop they have abrogated labour laws won by workers after decades of hard struggle and increased working hours from 8 hours to 12 hours. This attack on workers’ rights comes at a time when crores of workers are desperate without livelihoods and not in a position to protest. They are being hunted in the hour of crisis and the Yogi government along with many state governments is at the forefront of the hunting party.

Sudhakar Yadav said that a substantial part of the 20 lakh crore package announced by Prime Minister Modi and Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman is actually a Loan Disbursement Program and this is a great betrayal of workers and farmers. The solution to the horrific distress being faced by the poor and the working class does not lie in this package; neither does this package hold out any hope for the future.

Agrarian Workers’ Helplessness

AIARLA National General Secretary Dhirendra Jha has said that the additional amount of Rs 40 crores in the MNREGA funds is a measure that could have been substantially effective during this mega-crisis if the unjust MNREGA rates were also changed; there should be guarantee of Rs 500 daily wage and 200 days’ work per person. He said that MNREGA workers do not receive the wages as declared by the States, despite the provision in the original MNREGA Act the wages for unskilled labor as fixed by the State government will be the MNREGA wage. During this period of Lockdown AIARLA and MNREGA Mazdoor Sabha have consistently campaigned for Rs 500 wages and 200 days’ work, and this campaign will be further intensified.

Though there is a provision of unemployment allowance in the Act but that was not implemented by the government.

The rural economy is in horrific chaos due to Covid19 and the long and wrongly drawn-out Lockdown. The neglect by the Central and State governments for migrant workers and their return home have pushed rural areas into further distress. People in the villages are constrained to borrow from moneylenders to send money to relatives stranded in the cities. The AIARLA demanded Rs 10,000 Lockdown Subsistence Allowance for all workers, poor, and small farmers and said that the government’s highly inadequate announcements are not getting translated into implementation on the ground. The announcement made 50 days ago of 1 kg dal every month per family has not been implemented yet on the ground.

Holding the Central government responsible for the deaths of migrant workers on the road, AIARLA demanded Rs 20 lakh each as compensation to the families of all the workers who died due to Lockdown-induced tragedies.

Workers Need Food and Shelter with Dignity

Rs 3,500 crore allocated for providing grains and pulses to migrant workers as part of the financial package is nothing short of a cruel joke. If properly implemented then out of this sum each migrant worker will receive hardly less than one day’s wage amount! This allocation will not save them even for two days’ hunger. They are left deliberately under appalling conditions by criminal negligence and insensitivity of the Modi government.

There is no concrete relief in the package for small farmers, street vendors and small shopkeepers except provision for taking loans which will have to be repaid with interest.

Hunger, Suffering, Fatigue and Sickness

Even as the 4rd phase of Lockdown begun the migrant workers continued their forced walk for thousands of kilometers to reach their homes, suffering hunger, dehydration, fatigue and sickness. Many are dying on the way in their struggle to reach home. These deaths are not accidents but Lockdown-induced massacres. For the sadistic Modi government these workers, who are the backbone of the country’s economy, are second class citizens.

At such a time when migrant workers and all other workers are bearing the worst brunt of lockdown, the first priority for the government, as made clear by Modi’s recent address, is not the migrant workers but corporate houses and big industrialists, to compensate for the hit their profits have taken and to increase their profits. To increase corporate profits, the government has floated the balloon of ‘Atmanirbhar Bharat’ or Self-Reliant India.

Measures like the abrogation of labor laws, increase of the working day from 8 hours to 12 hours, forcing migrant workers into bonded labor and weakening social security clearly show that ‘Self-Reliant India’ will be built by turning workers into slaves. The entire burden of the economic crisis will be put on the toiling masses.

AICCTU condemned in unequivocal terms the criminal negligence and insensitivity of the Modi government towards all workers including migrant workers and demands that the government should immediately address problems of workers with dignity and ensure that migrant workers are brought home safely and without delay by train free of cost.