According to some migrant workers who came out today, it’s because they wanted to show what they were feeling. Desperate, they apparently organised themselves to come out. They repeat ‘we want to go home, even if it’s on foot.’ They say the food being supplied isn’t enough.
They add they are getting dry rations and meals but not enough. And while working they had shifts so there was place to sleep as half of them would be at work. Now everyone is home so no space to sleep in their shanties. Even using the pay and use toilet costs money, they say.
But what’s also very clear is that these migrant labourers don’t want to live in camps. They know staying in a camp means they are stuck. And mentally, they had planned to leave on the 14th. Currently Maharashtra Government has 4573 labour camps sheltering 560450 & feeding 736939
Also when we asked them why they weren’t carrying basic belongings & why they came to Bandra West, instead Bandra Terminus, they say they had barely stepped out of the adjacent slum when police stopped them. So police was quick. Also this was hardly 10% of the slum population.
The migrant workers issue is an inter and intra state problem. It requires a national consensus and national effort. It requires a policy level intervention on a war footing. Cities like Mumbai have the heaviest burden to bear with a huge migrant population.
Some of them say they had bookings to go back home and they would have walked to Bandra Terminus across the foot overbridge to Bandra Terminus to check on availability of trains back home. They had hoped to get on an evening train. That added to the chaos.
It’s not easy for the govt & police either. Policemen on the spot say the use of force was difficult decision but they had to do it as they could not have stood by and watched the situation deteriorate. The nearby mosque was also used to make announcements, eyewitnesses said.
It was only when all appeals, including from the mosque, asking people to go back indoors failed, mild lathicharged was ordered to maintain law and order. The entire episode lasted barely 30-45 minutes at the most. And whether is Surat or Mumbai, story is the same everywhere.
For everyone asking why crowd gathered outside the mosque, answer is simple. Mosque is at the entry/exit point of the slum, adjacent to the station concourse and bus stand.
That does not mean there was no instigation but the mosque is incidental here, not by design.
That does not mean there was no instigation but the mosque is incidental here, not by design.
