Thinking aloud..still

They didn’t reject us. Or leave us. We failed them. May be as a country but definitely as a society. 

I am referring to the migrants scrambling to make their way home by any means, human or inhuman. Let’s not pretend that they had the luxury of choice of rejecting us, the hand that fed them, or that’s what they thought. 

When the country went into a lockdown on March 24th, it was assumed that as a society we are responsible enough to take care of our own. That the employers will pay their employees at least enough for their sustenance, the landlords will forgo their rentals for this period and people will rally around the have-nots to ensure that the pandemic is dealt with in the most effective way known till that point of time: complete lockdown. Lots of people rose to the occasion and they are the ones who made a huge difference. But most of us, cocooned ourselves and believed that our duty was limited to beating of thalis and lighting of diyas. 

The economic hardships were expected, and as usual, number of experts spouted number of theories and what the government should do. What no expert pointed out was what we as a society should do, except stay home. No experts mentioned that we should ensure survival of our staff, at home or at work. Businesses, micro, small, medium or big were suddenly the big victims with their empty factories and restaurants and malls. All the debates on the media were about them. There are thousands of webinars on how to survive the lockdown or how to get back to business. There were a few advising people and business how to deal with their staff and how to ensure their survival. It is surprising how many businesses and households, could not sustain themselves for a couple of months despite having the moratorium on their EMI’s( loan repayments are a large part of the household expense). Some of them were genuinely cash strapped, for lack of their salaries or for cancellation of orders. But lot of people took it as an opportunity to lay off people or reduce salaries in anticipation just because they could.

What we see play out in media and the social media groups is our collective guilt for having let that happen. We know that we could have prevented it. We know that we panicked and eventually let the weakest link in the chain take all the load. We, with all our expert opinions and the opinions of the experts, decided that the world was going to end. And if does come back to life, we can find new faces to run our lives. Because, they do not have a choice. 

Today, the same people, who didn’t have the cash flow to last a couple of months in their business are advising the Government on how it should deal with the crisis. And its made mostly of freebies, the money that the government should just put in the bank and not ask any questions. We don’t care of the government “takes care” of these migrants as long as it can “take care” to keep them off the TV and social media screens. Because if the tax slab was revised upwards, as say, migrant labor cess, the hue and cry will definitely replace the “pain” we feel for the migrants. 

This debate is not about what the government could or could not have done. Whatever it did, it could have done lots more. This is just to fuel a debate on our business models, Is the labor most expendable part of our business? Is that sustainable in the country as populated as ours? Can we, as a society and as a nation, create a safety net for them?

Let me put a disclaimer: I AM NOT AN EXPERT.