Bhopal, The corona curfew has underlined a labour paradox in Madhya Pradesh. Of nearly 60,000 labourers — mostly daily wagers — rendered jobless due to lockdown, around 30,000 have been forced to return home from Gujarat even as some farmers in Madhya Pradesh are complaining of delay in harvesting operations for want of workforce.
In Indore and Ujjain districts in adjoining Malwa area, most farmers have already harvested the early sown variety of wheat and black gram even before the curfew was enforced. The late sown variety – for want of irrigation facility – isn’t ready for harvest.
There was double trouble for some farmers. Just as they were about to get the labourers to the harvesting and threshing operations, heavy showers have lashed the region for the past three days. The farmers expect a sunny week to partially undo the damage to the standing crop.
The state government has responded promptly by issuing orders to allow harvesters and concerned labour force to work with due precaution. Masked labourers were in action till about a week ago. Masks are even otherwise mandatory to guard against allergy to shredded hay.
On Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday highways were full of workers, including women and minors, walking home in Madhya Pradesh from neighbouring Gujarat. All of them were eking out a living in Gujarat. Prosperous towns of Surat, Ahmedabad, Rajkot, Navsari and other districts can no longer sustain jobs for them. They have been returning in hordes to their homes in poverty-stricken districts Jhabua, Alirajpur, Barwani, Ratlam, Ratlam, Bhind and Morena in MP.
Videos of them footing it have gone viral and authorities are checking them from health issues before letting them into the state.
In Alirajpur, the police confirmed around 5,000 people have entered MP, mostly walking, from district check posts. Many might have entered through other routes linking Gujarat and MP. Some workers in 10 buses from Gujarat Navsari district are returning to MP. Jhabua recorded 7,000 arrivals and Ratlam about 250. Most of them would go to other parts of the state.
The Gujarat government does want the workers to stay back and has assured arrangements for food and lodging, but a week without work and wages in some parts turned the workers home-bound. This was because the labour contractors who engaged them could not ensure food or shelter. Only those who have left by foot and are midway were being let off to return home.
Many of them said that they started walking back home on Tuesday midnight from Gujarat when the lockdown came into force and were given food and other stuff to get going by some kind persons.
Some of the managed to hitch a ride or were able to hire other modes of transport during the initial nights of the lockdown.
A man, who reached Pitol area check post in Jhabua on Thursday, said most of them had been thermally scanned (for temperature) according to their register.
Vijay Ahirwar (28), a resident of Morena who after walking all the way from Surat entered MP from Jhabua district’s Pitol integrated check post said that there was no point staying back in Gujarat. “I am a daily wager and now with the shutdown in Surat, there was no point staying there empty stomoch. So I returned home.”
