The flood of migrant workers on NH 44 has not receded yet, but already a huge pile of bitter memories of the epochal COVID-19 lockdown and the exodus of thousands of the poor walking under hot sun has been created. The memories being carried by the workers concern their being pathetically pushed to an extreme by employers and middlemen who ought to have taken care of them, and of the people at large who rose to the occasion to feed them through their perilous ‘travel’.
“We were told to return home by the employers and labour contractor. With no money and no work we could not have done anything but start for our place on foot,” recalled mason Prakash Thakur Gond and his wife Bharatibai from Rajnandgaon in Chattisgarh, of the events post-lockdown, summing it up for the droves of the labourers pouring onto the NH 44 in Adilabad district starting March 25.
The locals, especially the conscientious lot living in villages on the over 50 km stretch of the NH 44 between Ichoda and Dollara village located on the inter State border with Maharashtra on Penganga river bridge in Adilabad district organised food and water for the hordes of exhausted and famished people walking towards their destination. “We could not have let them go hungry,” observed Nomula Santosh Reddy and Mayur Chandra, sarpanch of Pipparwada and Bheemsari villages respectively as they recalled the initial flow of the migrant workers.
ADVERTISEMENT
It is estimated that about 50,000 labourers have crossed the inter State border into Maharashtra during the about 40 days of the exodus. The workers marched towards their home in two phases, the second one starting after April 15 once the lockdown extension was announced.
For the villagers of Pipparwada, feeding the stranded people had started on March 22 itself when the sudden lockdown had hundreds of lorries stopping at the local toll plaza and the inter State border about 3 km further. The participants in the great show of humanity include the couple associated with Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh, Soma Srinivas Reddy and Rekha from Karanji village who used to get up at 2 a.m. every day and arrive on the NH 44, about 15 km away at 5 a.m. to feed the labourers.
There was Ramanna of Gimma village, a tea seller who inspired villagers to donate rotis to the workers who had taken the difficult railway line route, as those from the north are not accustomed to eating rice. There were scores of groups of friends like the one in which Rajnikanth from Adilabad town is a member, who served food and water for about 15 days in addition to the staff of the toll plaza and employees of the concessionaire.
ADVERTISEMENT
Friends B. Sanjiv Reddy and G. Karunakar Reddy distributed footwear, biscuits and bread while another group distributed umbrellas. The Pipparwada villagers also fed a few hundred private persons who had to wait for long hours at the border until permission to transit came their way.