SURAT, India — The crowds surged through the gates, fought their way up the stairs of the 160-year-old station, poured across the platforms and engulfed the trains. It was May 5, around 10 a.m. Surat was beastly hot, 106 degrees. Thousands of migrant laborers were frantic to leave — loomContinue Reading
By Varghese Alengaden Indore, Sept 15, 2020: More than 10 million migrant workers traveled back home from various parts of India during the lockdown between March 24 to June 2. According to an NGO, Save Life Foundation, 198 workers died in different places during their exodus. Yet it was veryContinue Reading
By Irudhaya Jothi Konchowki, July29, 2020: Trade unions have become irrelevant in post globalization era, paving way for industrialists to make unholy alliance with those in power to exploit workers, says a recent study. In India, the trade unions had sidelined the concerns of migrants for long and kept themContinue Reading
By Sujata Jena Bhubaneswar, July 25, 2020: The sudden announcement of a nationwide lockdown on March 25 hit millions of most vulnerable people, especially migrant workers who survive only by moving. While most state governments showed apathy to the migrants’ suffering Kerala in southern India became a model of handlingContinue Reading
By Purushottam Nayak Bhubaneswar, June 25, 2020: Jishaya Nayak, a migrant worker in Kerala, southwestern India, had given up hope of returning home amid the protracted nationwide lockdown. The 23-year-old Catholic youth from Gajapati district in the eastern Indian Odisha state was among some 300 migrants stranded because of theContinue Reading
By Sujata Jena Bhubaneswar, June 20, 2020: Everyone has a choice to act upon a situation or to remain indifferent to it. The former makes us happy as a Chinese saying goes: “If you want happiness for a lifetime, help somebody.” I am happy to share with you my experienceContinue Reading
Bhopal, May 14, 2020: Thousands of migrant on May 14 went on warpath in a Madhya Pradesh town after the central Indian state allegedly failed to arrange food and transportation for them. Violence erupted in Sendhwa town on the Madhya Pradesh-Maharashtra border after the migrants blocked traffic on the NationalContinue Reading
By Varghese Alengaden Indore, May 14, 2020: I received many personal emails responding to my reflection on migrant workers which was published in Matters India under the title, “Workers Deserve Justice not Charity.” Bernard Colombe from Lyon, a city in France, sent me a reflection related to the plight ofContinue Reading
Panaji, May 11, 2020: Archbishop Filipe Neri Ferrão of Goa has urged his faithful to help migrant laborers going home after being rendered jobless because of the nationwide lockdown. “We are all going through troubled times, caused by the unprecedented COVID-19 pandemic and we need to recognize among those whoContinue Reading
By Jacob Peenikaparambil Indore, May 4, 2020: The saga of migrant laborers taking risk to reach their homes somehow is reported in the media every day ever since lockdown was clamped all over India on March 25. On May 2, the Madhya Pradesh police found during a routine check upContinue Reading