Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Saturday said that migrant workers and labourers have suffered “tremendously” during the coronavirus pande...
Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Saturday said that migrant workers and labourers have suffered “tremendously” during the coronavirus pandemic and the countrywide lockdown enforced to contain it. In his letter to the nation on completing a year of his second term in office, Modi assured the people that his government is working hard to alleviate the country’s troubles and that India would set an example in economic revival.
“In a crisis of this magnitude, it can certainly not be claimed that no one suffered any inconvenience or discomfort,” Modi said. “Our labourers, migrant workers, artisans and craftsmen in small scale industries, hawkers and such fellow countrymen have undergone tremendous suffering. However, we have to take care to ensure that inconveniences that we are facing do not turn into disasters.”
Migrant workers were the first in the workforce to be hit by a big economic downturn. When Prime Minister Narendra Modi announced a nationwide lockdown in March, hundreds of thousands of migrants and their families poured out of cities as they tried to get back to their native villages, after their jobs evaporated overnight. Many died. Some have been crushed by trains, others were run over by trucks, and some died of exhaustion while attempting to walk across states to get...
