As an incredibly large number of migrant labourers take to the roads, entirely on foot, without provision of food, drinks, shelter back to their villages, I ask 'will they all, their young, survive this ordeal in this hot summer?
Forget social distancing, they are huddled together as they leave the cities. If even one in each large horde was infected, surely multitudes are carrying Corona to the rural vistas.
Note that they have no trains, no buses, no private vehicles, no jeeps or chakdas, or rickshaws, nothing whether in the cities they are leaving or back in their villages.
Note also that due to the scare of #Corona villages en-route are not very likely to play host
I was particularly dejected to see villages hanging prominent notices in vernacular "NO ENTRY", "NOT WELCOME IN THIS VILLAGE" etc and refusing to allow even their own, back home.
Just imagine these young walking all the way back to their families - for whom in the first place they came to slog in the cities - and the families turning them away, as decided by the village panchayat!
I am not blaming the villages, either. Aren't elite societies in cities turning doctors away? How many of us are likely to give a lift to strangers in our closed cars on such highways? These are hopeless times.
At some level I feel terribly guilty as an urbanite, for throwing our poor out, all the way to their villages, with our virus, and infecting the villages for our sake.
This is an extremely insensitive comment. Or I bet this gentleman has not seen videos of these hapless migrants on the roads laden with their meagre belongings.
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