The ongoing Covid-19 crisis has forced India to finally acknowledge the value of a migrant.
For decades, lakhs of workers have moved from one state to another looking for opportunities and livelihoods. The scale of the migration may vary from state to state or city to city, but none is left unscathed from this mass exodus away from the big cities due to the pandemic.
Helping migrants who are now unemployed, displaced, in debt and weakened by the lack of monetary support is vital not just as our moral duty, but also because a failure to do so will create multiple systemic economic problems and could potentially be disastrous for many sectors in India.
In a country like India where poverty levels are very high and when the problem is exacerbated due to self-imposed economic shocks and events like the Pandemic, there can be serious long-term impacts on economic growth and human capital will no longer be the advantage India will have. Poverty, Hunger, Joblessness, Un-employment and
stress are definitely not what the country should impose on the poor on top of their already existing problems.
A panel led by Union minister Thawar Chand Gehlot has recommended to the Modi government a slew of measures to encourage lakhs of migrant workers to come back to work in cities. It starts by framing a National Employment Policy to look into labor welfare, setting up of a ‘Migrant Workers Welfare Fund’ and enrolling them under Ayushman Bharat.
The GoM has said every migrant worker should be automatically enrolled for the Pradhan Mantri Jan Arogya Yojana (PM-JAY), popularly known as Ayushman Bharat — the government’s flagship health insurance scheme — so they are able to access cashless medical facilities at their workplace. In case a different version of PM-JAY has been implemented by state governments, the migrant workers should have access to those health schemes too.
The panel has also suggested setting up a ‘Migrant Workers Welfare Fund’ under which every migrant worker should be automatically enrolled into the fund that will operate on equal contributions from the worker, employer, home state government, destination state government and the central administration. This fund will be managed by the
labour ministry, and will address the requirements of accommodation, health insurance and unemployment allowance in case a migrant worker shifts a job.
The Panel has also suggested confidence-building measures such as scholarships to the children of the migrant workers for their schooling, access to anganwadis for their children, textbooks and school uniforms, water and sanitation measures at their place of stay, ration card portability and recreational activities by their employers.
A drive can be launched to enroll around 2 crore construction workers, who are eligible but have not registered the Building and Other Construction Workers (BOCW) Act. This will provide pension, social assistance, housing loans education benefits, group insurance, maternity benefits and skill training to all the workers. The current processes
of registration and renewal in the BOCW Act, rules and guidelines should be simplified and registration should be done on a mobile app. A mechanism for ensuring portability of welfare benefits under BOCW Welfare Boards should also be developed for construction workers who are travelling to other states frequently for work.
Union Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman announced a “One Nation One Ration” Card system to enable migrant workers and their family members to access PDS benefits from any Fair Price Shop in the country. But experts say most of these measures are long-term with none of the schemes like ‘One Nation One Ration Card’
taking off immediately. They also say right now migrant workers need cash for their day- to-day needs instead of schemes that will fructify later. Instead of announcing ‘One Nation One Ration Card’, the government could have announced universal PDS entitlement, allowing everyone to pick up ration wherever they are.
All these steps, could potentially give some tertiary support to the needy and the poor during the age of Covid 19. The migrant workers leaving the big cities has resulted in a huge shortfall in the workforce, threatening to cripple businesses and industries in cities they worked before migrating back to their homes. A reverse migration should not be the plan the government should be focusing on. The government needs to work towards putting money directly in the hands of the poor and begin work on a mega, all-inclusive pan India employment program to get people back to work immediately without having to depend on migrating to bigger cities to gain employment. A grand infrastructure
development plan; which India needs direly, should be the main priority for the Indian government. This type of a plan worked fabulously well in the US when Roosevelt launched the New Deal to pull the US out from the great depression by focusing employment and the three R’s – relief, recovery and reform. India direly needs such a
plan or risk entering a self-created depression.
“Not only our future economic soundness but the very soundness of our democratic institutions depends on the determination of our government to give employment to idle men. “, Franklin D. Roosevelt. No scheme or support program can replace the benefit or the empowerment one receives by having a job and getting paid for doing a good day’s work.
Mudita Chaturvedi