One year since lockdown, Surat migrant workers say life has only got harder
Work is scarce, buying food is difficult and many still sleep in the open. Migrant workers in the construction sector in Surat. | Aajeevika Bureau
In September, Shamliben , a construction worker from Kushalgarh in South Rajasthan, returned to Surat after having spent nearly six months of the Covid-19 lockdown in her home village in rural Rajasthan.
During the time in which Shamliben had been away, conditions in Surat had become considerably more difficult for her and the city’s thousands of other circular migrants, who spend some months in Surat and the rest of the time in their home villages.
Despite 15 migrant workers being crushed by truck in Surat, we continue to ask the wrong questions
It’s time to move away from the specifics of the tragedy to look at the structural reasons that force so many Indians to seek work so far from home. Feb 04, 2021 · 06:30 am The truck that ran over migrant labourers from Rajasthan sleeping by the roadside near Surat on January 19. | PTI
On January 19, the collision of a truck and a tractor 50 km north of Surat resulted in the deaths of 15 migrant labourers who were sleeping on the footpath by the road. Twelve of them died, including a 1-year-old girl.