The migrant crisis triggered by the Covid-19 pandemic is the worst humanitarian tragedy seen in India since Partition. Nothing illustrates that more than the heartbreaking video of a toddler trying to wake up his dead mother on Bihar’s Muzaffarpur railway platform
The Supreme Court on Friday asked all State Governments to send back migrants who have been stuck since the imposition of the lockdown within 15 days even as it reserved its order on the suo motu petition on the plight of migrant labour for June 9.
By the third week of May, more than 200 migrants were reported to have died due to road accidents while trudging home because of the nationwide lockdown. A colleague of mine suggested that we should do an analysis of the causes of these accidents.
Under a poignant and evocative headline in this issue of India Legal, “Going Home to Die on the Road”, (read here) penned by the author himself, IIT science professor Dinesh Mohan addresses the gruesome phenomenon of India’s lockdown-smitten migrant workers being crushed to death on roads by vehicles
Justice is activated when it is affected by human suffering. Justice unaffected by human suffering is not justice at all, but a mere chimera. The refusal of the Supreme Court to consider the desperate plight of migrant labour had caused despair amongst the people that suffering.