Despite increased funding, govt’s rural jobs programme can at best provide temporary reprieve for now
NEW DELHI : On the morning of 4 June, Sandip Singhroha embarked on an unusual journey. He, along with farmers from the agriculturally prosperous Karnal region of Haryana, boarded a bus to Bihar, accompanying a group of daily wagers who used to work at the local mandi or wholesale crop market.
Mandi operations had slowed down considerably because of the virus outbreak and the restrictions imposed by the state to contain its spread. The workers who would sort, grade, and load the produce were left with little work and wanted to go back to their villages in Bihar.
Singhroha and the group of farmers he was travelling with were worried about an acute labour shortage during the upcoming kharif planting season. Over the past week, Singhroha also received several distress calls from Sitamarhi in Bihar. “The labourers there had no work and wanted to come to Haryana to transplant paddy. They said they will die of hunger otherwise,” he said.
So the enterprising group of farmers from Haryana made a plan. They hired a bus for ₹1,05,000 to drop the mandi workers to their village in Samastipur, Bihar, and travel back with the skilled paddy transplanters to Haryana.
The 2,600 km round trip on a bus hired by three Haryana farmers is indicative of the ongoing flux in India’s labour market. Over the past two months, millions made an arduous journey from cities where they worked on daily wages to their villages in states such as Bihar, Uttar Pradesh, West Bengal, and Jharkhand.
Source: livemint
