Better to die while going back home: Life on the highway for migrants

Mangalore Today News Network

Delhi, May 12, 2020: Thousands of migrant workers have set off on foot, cycles to their native towns covering hundreds of kilometres through the highways in the scorching heat with their family as to IndiaToday.

 

 

Rendered jobless due to the lockdown, migrants, including women and children, walking in the sun with their all belongings in a bag on the highways, have become defining images of the lockdown in India. Despite governments assuring them food and shelter, these anxious citizens continue the tough journey back home as they walk day and night to far away states of Uttar Pradesh, Bihar, Jharkhand Chhattisgarh and Jammu and Kashmir.

Neither this journey nor the situation is ordinary.

India Today tracked groups of migrants along the Jaipur-Ajmer highway, as they continued their long marches in a desperate bid to return safe confines of their home.

The correspondent travelled with these migrant labourers to take a look at what life is on the highway right now.

It takes around three hours to travel from Jaipur to Ajmer in a car with air conditioner saving you from the boiling heat of Rajasthan in the month of May.

At present, on the roads are thousands who don’t have the means to cover the same journey in three hours or afford a transportation facility with services of an air conditioner. And so, they have set off on foot to their destinations some even without footwear.

The correspondent’s journey started at 7.30 pm from Jaipur for Ajmer.