Onus on the states

In this summer of unprecedented privations, every day brings in mind-numbing stories of immeasurable misery. Yet, there could be nothing more tragic that the death of six migrant workers walking home on the Delhi-Saharanpur highway. They were walking from Punjab towards Bihar when they were mowed down by a speeding state transport bus near Muzaffarnagar in Uttar Pradesh. The host and home states can no longer wash their hands of this exodus.

After the second tranche of relief announced by Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman on Thursday, the onus is now on the state governments to stop the walking migrant workers, offer them cooked food, shelter and transportation to the nearest railway station. The Centre has sanctioned Rs 3,500 crore to provide five kg of rice or wheat and one kg of pulse free for two months to those migrant labourers who do not possess a ration card. This ought to provide immediate relief to eight crore migrants. Free foodgrains and allocation of Rs 5,000 crore for street vendors can immediately stop the exodus if the state governments imaginatively spread the word and implement these decisions, whereas, one nation-one ration card, affordable rental housing complexes for migrants and the Rs 6,000 crore worth employment generation programme for tribals are all policy pronouncements that would need time for implementation. The hiked MGNREGA rates of Rs 202 per day and the 40-50 per cent buoyancy in the number of beneficiaries ought to calm the frayed nerves of the returning migrants.

However, the primary implementing agency for all these relief measures are the state governments, which should not have allowed the migrants to become so desperate that they had to walk from Punjab to Bihar or Maharashtra to Odisha or Himachal Pradesh to Madhya Pradesh. Sitharaman on Thursday reiterated that the Centre had provided Rs 11,000 crore to the state governments to set up relief centres to house the migrants and to provide them with cooked food. Ration shops on their own will not be able to distribute free grains and pulses. Only the state governments can make a difference now.