New Delhi: As heartbreaking reports and visuals of stranded migrants began surfacing on news channels and social media, a group of students as well as alumni from three premier institutes decided to help workers reach home, with food and some cash for emergencies.
Groups from the National Law School of India University (NLSIU) in Bengaluru, the National Academy of Legal Studies and Research (NALSAR) in Hyderabad and the Birla Institute of Technology (BITS) in Pilani mobilised funds to aid migrant workers stranded across the country amid the Covid-19 pandemic.
A 50-member team of students and alumni from the ‘NALSAR for COVID-19 Migrant Workers Crisis’ initiative arranged for 174 workers and their children to fly from Bangalore to Raipur on 5 June.
With support from the Foodshaala Foundation, Samerth Charitable Trust and Loving Migrant Workers Network, the group managed to raise a total of Rs 30 lakh, out of which Rs 20 lakh had come from their alumni.
“We were looking for ways of helping them in a way that treated them with the same amount of empathy and dignity that we give to those repatriated from foreign countries,” Tejaswi Shetty, a NALSAR alumnus, told ThePrint.
Shetty also said while many had called them out for being “elitist” by choosing to airlift workers, it was a more cost-efficient exercise.
“We chose the North-South sector because the train and bus journeys are very long. But it’s much more dangerous and there is a higher risk of infection. It was a vast quantity of misery for the travellers,” she added.
Over 80 people are said to have died between 9 and 27 May while travelling in the Shramik Special trains, mostly due to heat, exhaustion, and thirst. The age group of those who died ranged from 4 to 85 years.
Mounika Danur, a volunteer with NALSAR, recalled a migrant couple who travelled from Bengaluru to Raipur telling her that they never imagined reaching home was possible in just “two hours”.
The groups had also facilitated travel of 45 brick kiln workers and their families from Bhilwara in Rajasthan to Uttar Pradesh’s Chitrakoot, in collaboration with the Jai Bhim Vikas Seva Sanstha Thursday (4 June).
Their efforts, however, were not without struggle. Working round the clock, the team was divided into four groups — two handling air and train journeys, one for food security and another for sanitation.
Understanding quarantine protocols for each state, coordinating with airport authorities, airlines and relevant state authorities were of utmost importance to ensure everything sailed smoothly.
“We were dealing with first time travellers, so ID cards were an issue. Moreover, we had to educate them about what they can carry and what was permitted inside an aircraft because a lot of them were practically shifting homes,” Shetty added.
Another NALSAR volunteer Prerna Seervani said they had to explain to the passengers how they will have to self-quarantine upon arrival in their home states.
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NLSIU raised Rs 13 lakh in 24 hours
The group from NALSAR was inspired to help stranded workers after alumni from the NLSIU sent 180 migrants from Mumbai to Ranchi in a chartered flight on 28 May.
“Most of the passengers were not going to the main city. Which is where the state government came into the plan to ensure last mile connectivity. We choose our route on a need-based level,” Priyanka Roy, an NLSIU alumnus, told ThePrint.
The NLSIU group had managed to raised Rs 13 lakh in 24 hours for the endeavour.
“The cost of sending the workers by bus or flight was almost the same, so we decided on this option. Then, we raised funds to pay for the chartered flight,” one of the organisers has been quoted as saying.
The group has since chartered four flights — two from Mumbai to Ranchi, one from Mumbai to Bhubaneswar and another from Bangalore to Raipur. They have also raised another Rs 45 lakh, enough to deploy at least three other flights.
NLSIU, along with BITS Pilani, also collaborated with the Akshaya Patra Foundation, a non-profit organisation that runs mid-day meal programmes in schools across India, to supply 1,00,000 Shramik train passengers with food and water.
An alumnus of NLSIU has been quoted as saying that trains from Mumbai and Delhi were mainly headed to West Bengal, Uttar Pradesh and Bihar — journeys of 24 to 48 hours.
Akshaya Patra will package supplies into food-and-water packets from its warehouses and deliver them to Central Railway at Kurla Station and Northern Railway at Old Delhi and New Delhi stations. The railway authorities will hand over a packet to each passenger prior to boarding which will contain “bread, biscuits (2 packets), chikki, bananas, ORS (1 pack), bottled water (2 litres),” the alumnus added.
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