Homeward bound through the centre of India

They were mostly just passing through – in thousands. They came every day, on foot, on bicycles, on trucks, in buses, in or on just about any vehicles they could find. Tired, exhausted, desperate to reach home. Men and women of all ages, many children, too.

These were people coming from Hyderabad and beyond, from Mumbai and Gujarat, or from across Vidarbha and western Maharashtra, and headed north or eastwards – to Bihar, Chhattisgarh, Jharkhand, Madhya Pradesh, Odisha, Uttar Pradesh and West Bengal.

Millions across the country made the same call when they found their lives disrupted, their livelihoods at a standstill with the lockdown: they would go back to their villages, their families and loved ones. However hard the journey, it would be better that way.

And many of them are moving through Nagpur, geographical centre of the country and in normal times one of its most important rail junctions. This flow moved on for weeks and weeks. It was not until well into May that the state and central government began ferrying some of the migrants in buses and trains. But thousands who simply could not find a seat, continued their long-distance home-bound journeys any which way they could.

Among them: A young couple with their 44-day-old baby girl, traveling from Hyderabad to Gorakhpur, on a hired motorbike, in temperatures touching the mid-40s.

Thirty-four young women from villages in Chhattisgarh’s Dhamtari district, trying to reach home from Ahmedabad where they had gone to train under a skill development programme.

Five young men, on their recently purchased bicycles, headed for Rayagada district of Odisha.

On the outer ring road of Nagpur, hundreds of migrants are still arriving from National Highways 6 and 7, each day. They are served food at several points and found shelters around a toll plaza, organised by the district administration and a coalition of NGOs and citizens’ groups. The labourers rest through the scorching summer day and resume their journeys by evening. The Maharashtra government has now arranged for buses to drop them at the borders of different states, every day. So those crowds could now begin to thin out – and people might reach the safety of their homes – which is all they want.