Reality Check

As I see it, the migrant – crisis that we see today is because of  the dirty politics, not economics or health factors.

The central  govt’s intial decision to keep migrants at the places they were was the most sensible one. By allowing them to go to  their home states, what has happened is that their coming has multiplied the number of corona cases in their home states – Odisha and Bihar are the prime examples. Odisha was the best state, not Kerala that Khan Market Gang will like us to believe, in controlling corona until recently. But now , with migrants from Bengal and Gujarat coming in, the state is having a big problem.

So allowing migrants to go  back to their home states  means you have  deliberately taken corona to the countryside. You have worsened the situation.

Secondly, if the migrants were not allowed to leave their places of work, economic revival process would have been much smoother with no labour shortages. So allowing them has not been good for the economy as well.
So the challenge was to keep the migrants healthy, safe and free from hunger  in their places of stay. They should have been pursuaded successfully that the govt will do everything to restore their jobs and livelihood.
In stead , parties, particularly one which had lost the people’s mandate badly and whose leaders badly needed oxygen to survive politically, went all out to instigate the migrants , asking them to leave for their home states. And thanks to competitive politics, every other party, including the ruling parties  everywhere,  joined the competition. The national media that is controlled firmly by the Khan Market gang provided oxygen to the fire.

The central government hopelessly and cowardly agreed to everything, without realising it has lost the most now in public perceptions.