Migrants and Democracy

Context: The ongoing mass protests in the US against police brutality provides a reference point for assessing the response of India’s migrant workers to the suffering forced on them by a sudden lockdown.

Problems faced by migrants:

• The silent lambs: They suffered violence forced into camps, slept on rail tracks and yet stoically marched on to their journeys back home.

• Delayed and neglected efforts: by the middle class, good samaritans, and the Supreme Court were too late to offer any meaningful respite to their miseries.

• Unemployment and Eviction: left them with the single choice of social security I.e underemployment in natal villages and hospitality of kin.

• Not considered as full citizens: so no rage and rebellion

• They live on sufferance of the state where they expect least is to be left alone and are grateful for any help, if offered, by the State.

• Caste-ridden: not aware of their rights and subsist their marginal lives based on their castes, prone to imitate their superiors in defending social evils like honour killing.

• Easy converts: Due to their perennial woes, they can be influenced to spread hatred and create divisions by blaming others for their woes.

Way forward: Converting mass humanity into citizens.

• Understanding the essence of democracy: Organising people to assert their essential humanity, assume their self worth and exercise their right as citizens to demand and receive their entitlements, and to hold the State to account.

• Constitution as a radical solution: The Indian constitution seeks to institutionalize democracy which gives way for social change and organized action as a way to achieve it.

• Organize workers: Along the lines of workers’ cooperatives as seen in Kerala so auto-enable them to resume their work as a cooperative work and not through a traditional contractor.