MASS EXODUS

Aditya Bagi
adityabagi96@gmail.com

ABSTRACT

Mumbai is the commercial capital of India. It is also known as the city that never sleeps.
Mumbai is the perfect blend of culture, customs and lifestyles. Mumbai is India’s most
cosmopolitan city, its financial powerhouse and the nerve center of India’s fashion industry.
Mumbai is also dotted with plenty of architectural landmarks from Victorian era and the days
of Raj. Mumbai is also the birthplace of Indian Cinema.
Some of the places to visit in Mumbai include The Prince of Wales Museum, Victorian
Terminus, Gateway of India, Marine Drive, Flora Fountain and Malabar Hill. By Air
Mumbai is well connected with most of the major cities in India by Air. The Chhatrapati
Shivaji International airport is the main aviation hub in the city and the second busiest airport
in India in terms of passenger traffic.
By Rail Mumbai rail network is spread at an expanse of 319 route kilometers. The Mumbai
suburban railway is popularly known as Locals forms the backbone of the city’s transport
system. Mumbai is also connected to major parts of India by the Indian Railway.

INTRODUCTION

The name of the city, Mumbai is derived from patron deity the Mother Goddess Mumba Devi,
worshiped by the earliest inhabitants the Kolis.
The city is incomplete without its dose of colorful festivals. As one of the most populous and
the most diverse cities in India, Mumbai is also home to innumerable festivals. Some of the
most important festivals are Ganesh Chaturthi, Diwali, Christmas, Eid, Moharram, Navaratri,
Maha Shivratri and Durga Puja.
Mumbaikars are very passionate about their local cuisines. Since the city is so diverse, a lot of
cuisines have been adopted and transformed into mouthwatering dishes that are now
considered unique to Mumbai.

STORYLINE
Stories of hunger deaths of migrants stranded between their villages and big cities
have begun to slowly find space. Many of these reports are promptly denied, but
in each of these cases, the dead never return.
For instance, a woman daily wage worker threw her five children into the Ganges
River because, she reportedly claimed, she was no longer able to provide food for
them. Police later claimed starvation was not the reason but that she was of an
unsound mind and acrimonious. In another case, a hungry migrant in Delhi sold
his phone for 2,500 Indian rupees, which he handed over to his wife, and then
hung himself. The police said he was also mentally unstable.
By conservative estimates, ever since India went into a shutdown to flatten the
coronavirus pandemic curve, 189 deaths have taken place due to hunger,
exhaustion while walking back home and suicide. These numbers will swell
further.
According to government estimates, 1.25 million migrants are stranded between
big cities and their villages and are living in government shelters. By another
estimate, 33 per cent of the total migrant population has had no access to food
since 24 March, the day Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi announced a
comprehensive lockdown that has meant shutting down factories, work sites, small
and large businesses and transport. In a matter of a few hours, millions of daily-
wage workers lost their job and found it difficult to stay in their rented house.

Without money and fearing starvation, they each wanted to take the first bus or
train to their village, where they hoped to find food and emotional security.
Thousands headed to the bus terminal in Mumbai. They were stopped by force by
police officers who were ordered to keep people away from the roads. Many of
these migrants began to walk hundreds of kilometres back home. Some cycled or
took a lift to reach their village during the coronavirus lockdown.
While on his way home, a hungry and tired migrant collapsed in north India’s state
of Uttar Pradesh State. He was 400 kilometres from his village.
According to media there are 120 million rural migrants in most of the big and
small cities of the country There have been demonstrations and riots in Mumbai
and the textile city of Surat in Gujarat, where roughly 7,00,000 daily-wage
workers, unable to go home, are reportedly in miserable shape. Civil society
activists are increasingly coming forward with reports of starvation deaths.

“We are workers who work to feed ourselves—we are not beggars.”
In an article in an Indian daily newspaper, they advised that the government
should open up its considerable food reserves of 77 million tonnes—three times
more than its buffer stock. “At a time of national emergency, it makes perfect
sense to dispose of some of the existing stock,” they argued. They also
recommended issuing temporary ration cards to anyone who wants to stand in the
queue and pick up their monthly allocation. What has aggravated the crisis is the
understanding that there are about 100 million poor Indians who have been
excluded from the public distribution system due to outdated data. Many others
are left out from the public distribution system because their fingerprints could not
be read by a biometric machine.

An impossible choice
After the lockdown, the Indian government announced free rations and cash
transfers to migrants.