Rituparna Palit

large_01-Amarit-with-other-migrants-from-Tula-Chak-RP.jpg

medium_01-Amarit-with-other-migrants-from-Tula-Chak-RP.jpg

small_01-Amarit-with-other-migrants-from-Tula-Chak-RP.jpg

thumbnail_01-Amarit-with-other-migrants-from-Tula-Chak-RP.jpg

01-Amarit-with-other-migrants-from-Tula-Chak-RP.jpg

“In the village school here, the quality of education is not good. So I took my daughters to Varanasi. Who knew I would have to take them back to the village within three months of their admission in a city school?” says Arun Kumar Paswan, who worked in the kitchen of a restaurant in Varanasi city, Uttar Pradesh, earning Rs. 15,000 a month, until it closed in March due to the Covid-19 lockdown. In early May, when it was no longer possible to procure food for his family, Paswan decided to go back to Mayapur, their village in Gaya district of Bihar – around 250 kilometres from Varanasi. “I will be leaving with my family and a few others tomorrow at 3 a.m.,” Paswan told me on the phone on May 8. “We will walk to the [UP-Bihar] border and take a bus. It seems buses have been arranged from there. If we find a truck on the way, we will ask them to drop us to the border. Paswan and his wife, 27-year-old Sabita, along with their three little children – daughters Roli, 8, and Rani, 6, and son Ayush, 3 – left the next morning. They walked to the Karamnasa check-post, across the state border, 53 kilometres away. There, they had to clear thermal scanning at a health camp set up by Bihar’s Kaimur district administration before being allowed to board a bus. “Luckily, we got a state-operated bus from there, which ferried us to Gaya,” he told me after reaching Mayapur on May 11. Once they reached Gaya, they waited for another bus to get to the village, where they have been in self-isolation since their arrival.While Rani was happy to return to their old home, Roli complains that she misses the uniform of her ‘sheher wala school’ (city school), says Paswan.The Varanasi restaurant, where Paswan was working since August 2019, first shut on March 22 for the Janata Curfew, and then again on March 25, after the nationwide lockdown was imposed. He received his last salary in mid-March, but by the second week of April the situation became difficult. He stood in long queues, twice a day, to collect food packets distributed by district officials in Varanasi.But on May 8, Paswan had told me, “We have stopped receiving the food packets since the last four days. We have nothing to eat. We have no option but to leave.”

It took Kameshwar Yadav two days too, to make his way home to Ghatera village in Guraru block of Gaya. He was the head chef at a restaurant in Pandit Deen Dayal Upadhyaya Nagar (DDU Nagar; formerly known as Mughalsarai), located about 17 kilometres from Varanasi, in the adjacent Chandauli district.Yadav set off from DDU Nagar on April 15, when the first phase of the lockdown was extended. “The shutdown of the restaurant emptied my savings and my family here had started running out of rations. I had to reach them at the earliest.” After a two-day journey, of about 200 kilometres, mostly on foot and the rest on a truck, Yadav reached his village on April 17.When UP sealed its borders on March 23, Yadav had moved into the restaurant with three other colleagues, where their employer provided them with food. But he was worried about his children – Sandhya, 10, Sugandha, 8, and Sagar, 3 – who were in Ghatera with his wife, Rekha Devi, and his parents. “My kids used to cry on the phone. The lockdown was extended and the wait seemed longer,” says Yadav.He had hoped to rely on the green gram and wheat growing in the family’s 3 bigha (1.9 acres) farm, looked after by Rekha Devi and his parents. But rainfall earlier in April had destroyed the crop. The wheat was also affected by the rain, reducing the yield from an expected 70 kilos to 40 kilos – which he has kept aside for his family’s consumption. “Now all my hopes are on the new batch of green gram to be harvested in June,” says Yadav.

While Paswan and Yadav had to cover a relatively short 250 kilometres to reach home, Gaya resident Amarit Manjhi is still stranded in Tamil Nadu -- 2,380 kilometres away – along with 20 other migrants from his district. Manjhi, 28, had left Tula Chak, his village in Barachatti block, in October 2019, to work in a factory making roofing sheets, in Avinashi, taluka headquarters of Tiruppur district in TN.He earned Rs. 8,000 at the factory, where around 150 other migrant workers from Bihar were also employed; all of them stayed in rooms provided by the factory owners.On May 12, Manjhi and nine co-workers (in the cover photo on top) started on the very long walk home. But they had barely walked 2-3 kilometres when the police stopped them. They say they were beaten and then dropped back to their rooms. “The police said that we were violating the lockdown [rules], and fined us. One of our group’s members hurt his hand badly from the beating and we had to spend Rs. 2,000 to get it treated,” Manjhi told me on May 16.“Instead of beating us, the police could have guided us on how to reach our hometowns. We haven’t received any help, neither from the factory owner, nor the local administration,” Manjhi says. At that time, he and the others didn’t have information about the ‘Shramik Special’ trains for migrant workers running between TN and Bihar. “One way or the other we have to get home. We don’t fear the coronavirus or the heat now. It might take 14 days, but we’ll walk,” he said.Back home, in Tula Chak, Manjhi would have worked with his three brothers on their family’s farm, where they usually grow wheat and maize. But his share from 2 bighas (1.2 acres) of the land would be less than his earnings in Tiruppur – which is why he left home to work, he says. In Manjhi’s absence, his wife, Kiran Devi, 26, takes care of their plot.

The situation improved for Manjhi and his co-workers after the factory owners started sending them rations from May 19. He has only Rs. 500 left, and is hoping the factory will reopen so that he can earn again and send money home. Back in Ghatera village, Yadav is considering fallback options. “I’ll look for NREGA work [at rural employment guarantee scheme sites], which is yet to start here,” he says.In Varanasi, Abhishek Kumar, owner of The Flavours restaurant, and Yadav’s employer, says that all 16 of his staff members have returned to their hometowns in Bihar and Tamil Nadu. “Most of the chefs have refused to come back. I won’t be able to restart the business soon, even if the lockdown is lifted,” he says. Paswan too is waiting for work at MGNREGA sites to start in Mayapur, and he will look for work in local eateries. His share from his family’s farm in Mayapur – income that is divided among 10 members of his joint family – is too little to sustain his family, he says.He remains hopeful of an opportunity that could take him back to Varanasi. He and Sabita have left their belongings in their rented house there. “The owner has not agreed to drop the rent. When I am back I’ll have to pay him 2,000 rupees for each month that I am not there,” Paswan says. Until then, he will take up road construction jobs or dig trenches. “Do I have any other option? he asks. “I have to take up whatever work is available to feed my children.”

‘We don’t fear coronavirus or the heat now’

‘করোনাভাইরাস বা গরম কিছুতেই আমরা আর ডরাই না’

‘ನಾವು ಈಗ ಕೊರೋನವೈರಸ್ ಅಥವಾ ಬಿಸಿಲಿನ ತಾಪಕ್ಕೆ ಹೆದರುವುದಿಲ್ಲ’

‘હવે અમે નથી ડરતા કોરોનાવાયરસથી કે નથી ડરતા ગરમીથી’

’கொரோனா வைரஸ்ஸுக்கும் வெயிலுக்கும் நாங்கள் அஞ்சவில்லை’

‘আমি এতিয়া ক’ৰণাভাইৰাছ বা গৰমলৈ ভয় নকৰো’

‘अब हम कोरोना वायरस या गर्मी से नहीं डरते’

’اب ہم کورونا وائرس یا گرمی سے نہیں ڈرتے‘

‘कोरोना विषाणू किंवा उष्मा, कशाचीच भीती नाही’

ଏବେ ଆଉ ଆମେ କରୋନା ଭାଇରସ୍‌କୁ କି ଗରମକୁ ଡରୁନାହୁଁ

Gaya

At present, we can only accept donations in Indian rupees by Indian citizens. All donations made to the CounterMedia Trust are eligible for exemption under Section 80G of the Income Tax Act, 1961. Here is a copy of our exemption certificate.


India is bigger than New Delhi. And people need to know more about the rest of this vast nation.


Younger, media-saturated generations are growing up knowing little about their country, but a lot about the elites of a few metros and towns. For a narrowly-owned, commercially-driven media, the dumbing down of a nation is part of standard operating procedure. The last available data of the Centre for Media Studies (CMS, Delhi) show us that reports from New Delhi account for 66 per cent of news on the front pages of major dailies. The CMS data also found that just about 0.24 per cent of front page news came out of rural India. The TV channels are not much better.PARI exists to change that.We are a non-profit organisation. We publish under creative commons, and do not charge readers a subscription fee or put-up advertisements. Nothing is behind a paywall and we are completely free-to-access by anyone. We guard our independence and receive no direct grants from governments and corporations, nor any funding that could dictate our content. So, we are dependent on volunteer labour, donations from individuals, foundations and institutions that see value in independent and free media.PARI is changing the way Indian journalism reports and documents the rural.India is more than the elite of a few metros and towns. We report on rural lives and livelihoods, languages, communities, migrants and more. We need your help to pull off this most ambitious of Indian journalistic endeavours. The scale of this effort costs money. Donate generously - and spread the word about PARI.&nbsp;

Donate FAQs


Let’s get you acquainted

Welcome to PARI

All our content is, and will forever be free to consume. If you enjoy our work, you can support us by becoming a volunteer or by donating to help fund our work.

Want to republish this article? Please write to <a href="mailto:zahra@ruralindiaonline.org" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">zahra@ruralindiaonline.org</a> with a cc to <a href="mailto:namita@ruralindiaonline.org" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">namita@ruralindiaonline.org</a>

‘We don’t fear coronavirus or the heat now’

When their wages stopped and then food ran out, workers from Gaya, Bihar, employed in restaurants in Varanasi, made their slow way home – while others from the district remain stranded in faraway Tamil Nadu

Related stories

A rain-scented walk in Sivagangai

Living on ravaged land

Biswas and the bamboos on his bike

Recycling energy, Godda style

Bhadels of Goa

Pookadai: still throbbing with morning life

Koli Kadlas

Malnourishment high among children of migrants: study

Wheels of the rural Indian West

Living Under a Red Cloud in Bellary

Vedla – earrings of the Maher community

Dreaming of water, drowning in debt

Kali: the dancer and his dreams

Farmer's diet worse than a convict's

In Yavatmal, life goes on

Suicides are about the living, not the dead

Death of a carpenter

Hoisa Shigmo!

Women farmers: weaving a life in Anantapur

Defiant in Dhinkia

Spice and all that's nice

Kerala's Green Army

The ‘jugaad’ not-a-mobile

Health as someone else's wealth

Calibrating in a Kudumbashree assembly unit