Migrants and Democracy

The Economic Times     10th June 2020     Save    
QEP Pocket Notes

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.
QEP Pocket Notes