The Disaster and the Displaced
2020 has enforced upon us a crash course on the human and economic cost of disasters. The pandemic and the lockdown have exposed the horrors of the worst-case scenario for India’s internally-displaced migrants. We need to be better prepared for the disasters looming ahead.
Since the sudden announcement of the lockdown, we have watched in horror as the crisis of the migrant labourers has unfolded. Millions of our fellow women and men who take care of our children, build our homes, clean our shops, drive our taxis, grow our food, and run our world scrambled to get home to be with their families, to living conditions that they deemed to be better for themselves.
We watched as the government first ignored their pleas to go home, and then, weeks later, announced food rations and cash, which was ultimately insufficient to compensate for their loss of wages. Months passed before the migrants were finally permitted to go back home, but due to poor arrangements, many died of starvation and heat while on the long journey home. The sheer amount of people involved and the human tragedies that occurred—and continues to occur—is comparable to what happened at the time of partition in 1947, or indeed the violent displacement of a fourth of Syrian citizens over this decade.
The plight of the migrant labourers underscores how ill-prepared India is for dealing with emergency situations, and the displacement that results from these situations. India does not have a clear definition for displaced people that would have identified the migrant labourers as such. Nor do we have a policy and plan for policy-enforcement that should have kicked in immediately to rehabilitate and resettle the migrants. And we certainly do not have an effective disaster prevention plan that would have prevented the government from acting in haste, giving Indians a measly four hours’ notice before imposing a nationwide-lockdown, thereby creating the preventable migrant labour crises. As a consequence of this poor planning and slow action, we have witnessed, and continue to witness, the massive human and economic cost of poorly dealing with emergency situations.
It is critical that India remedy this immediately and build an effective plan for dealing with emergencies. With increasing tension at our borders, and natural disasters occurring more often across the country, India needs to be better prepared for the rising number of internal refugees. Future refugees should not face the same tragic circumstances of the migrant laborer during the pandemic that threatens their lives, livelihoods, and the broader economy.
The plight of the migrant labourers underscores how ill-prepared India is for dealing with emergency situations, and the displacement that results from these situations. India does not have a clear definition for displaced people that would have identified the migrant labourers as such. Nor do we have a policy and plan for policy-enforcement that should have kicked in immediately to rehabilitate and resettle the migrants.
The first step involves having a clear definition for Internally Displaced Persons (IDPs) that would lead to automatic identification of IDPs without considering the political motivations of the government in power. Tanushree Rao in her paper 'Protecting Internally Displaced Persons in India,' writes that
Despite such evidence suggesting that the Kashmiri Pandits were coerced into leaving the Valley, the Indian government does not consider them to be IDPs. Rather, they are treated as 'migrants,' a label is often given to IDPs for a government to deny and elude responsibility for protection by implying that their movement was voluntary.
This is true of the migrant labour crisis we saw during the pandemic. The migrant labourers do not voluntarily choose to live and work in deplorable conditions on construction sites, often leaving behind their families; they do this because they have no choice. And while the migrant laborers might not fit the U.N. definition of Internally Displaced Persons or Refugees, justice demands we seek a definition that encompasses them as Displaced Persons.
The second step involves having a formal policy for dealing with IDPs, such that ad hoc decisions are not taken by the government on action to be made. B.S Chimni, a legal scholar with expertise on International Refugee Law explains, “The absence of a national law on the status of refugees has also meant that refugees are dependent on the benevolence of the state rather than on a regime of rights to reconstruct their lives in dignity.” India is one of the few democracies that did not take part in the 1951 U.N. Refugee Convention and its 1967 Protocol, which would make us liable to follow the strict guidelines for rehabilitation and resettlement of refugees and Internally Displaced Persons. Instead, we have a Disaster Management Act 2005 that was evoked during the pandemic which proved ineffective and unclear in assigning responsibilities, leading many state governments to evoke the archaic Epidemic Diseases Act of 1897 in addition.
Along with a policy, India also needs a clear action plan for policy enforcement. The National Disaster Management Plan released in June 2016 (a decade after the Act) is criticised for being vague with no clear roadmaps, timelines for implementation, or guidelines for mobilisation of funds, and for not having a clear definition of what even qualifies as a natural disaster.
This lack of clarity is reflected in the poor enforcement of the DM Act. When disaster strikes, there are absolute basics that should be carried out to protect the lives and livelihoods of those affected. Cash for food and rebuilding homes, emergency medical care, compensation for losses, and quick action is critical for limiting the impact and hastening recovery.
Importantly, a policy for dealing with IDPs once the emergency has already occurred should not distract from the critical task of preventing these crises to begin with. The creation of Displaced Persons during the pandemic could have been avoided had we incorporated a plan for the refugees before announcing the lockdown. We need to implement policies that allow for these emergencies to be less profound. To start with, housing for the builders of our country should not be an afterthought. And in the case of natural disasters, if we know that cyclones along our long coastline frequently happen (increasingly so with climate change), precautions can be taken to strengthen the infrastructure in these danger zones, have safe locations for evacuation, and a plan for getting to these safe locations.
Similarly, we know that certain regions in the country are hotbeds for communal violence. We need precautions for the safety and evacuation of citizens that are periodically displaced in such conflicts.
2020 has sadly enforced upon us a crash course on the human and economic cost of disasters. The human cost of lives lost during a disaster is evident, but what is less evident are the lives lost and suffering caused by poor handling of these emergency situations. We saw this unfold as the migrant labourers tried to make their way back home in treacherous conditions with little money to feed themselves and their families. Politicians throughout the pandemic have justified their actions by falsely equating saving lives versus saving the economy, but many believe that the lives lost because of the lockdown, for innumerable reasons, will outnumber that of lives lost due to COVID-19.
These lives lost to COVID and the lockdown are of paramount importance, but there are also other serious consequences to consider. The upcoming labor-shortages stemming from migrants stuck in their native places because of continued quarantines, or because of resentment and refusal to return, is predicted to be devastating to our economy. From this perspective, we have woken up to just how critical our fellow citizens are to the running of the economy, and we cannot afford to continue to mistreat them. The foreseen severe blows to the economy will result in even more people losing their livelihoods, and lost livelihoods, by extension, means more lost lives.
This is an Indian-made tragedy, entirely of our construction. The result of political decisions at the highest levels have created a trail of tears during a time of relative peace. The U.N. sustainable business chief has called the coronavirus pandemic “just a fire drill” for what is likely lies ahead due to the climate crisis.
We need a game plan that kicks in at once when faced with such emergencies, immediate damage control that limits both the human and economic cost of these events. The quicker we rehabilitate, the less we will suffer the ripple and rebound effects.
Having a strong comprehensive disaster prevention plan has never been more pertinent. According to the Internal Displacement Monitoring Center, “There were five million new disaster displacements in India in 2019, the highest figure in the world and the result of a combination of increasing hazard intensity, high population exposure and high levels of social and economic vulnerability.” These conditions aren't going away in a hurry. Until there is serious action taken to tackle global warming, natural disasters will become a regular occurrence. India's commitment to developing a coal sector inducive to global warming around the same time that two cyclones hit our country is utterly heartbreaking. Many scientists, such as the University of Minnesota’s Rob Wallace and Dr. Michael Greger, believe that with wide-spread practices of factory farming, we are going to see more pandemics in the future.
The crises of the past, the present and the coming future will create more displaced people. We know that troubles lie ahead, and we need to demand action to plan not only to reduce their impact, but to respond without leaving behind our most vulnerable.
Though the government disputes the numbers, media reports say close to 650 migrant laborers’ have lost their lives during the lockdown. There was an exceptional case of a 15-year old girl who carried her ailing father on a bicycle some 1,200 km to their native village. We should be proud to call ourselves of the same nation as her, but also ashamed of our part in creating and maintaining the conditions that required such an act of heroism.
While her case was an outlier, most people’s stories have no such gilding. This is an Indian-made tragedy, entirely of our construction. The result of political decisions at the highest levels have created a trail of tears during a time of relative peace. The U.N. sustainable business chief has called the coronavirus pandemic “just a fire drill” for what is likely lies ahead due to the climate crisis. The time to act is now, before tragedy strikes our fellow citizens once again.
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Shefali Saldanha is Singapore-based working for an Impact Investing firm managing the India portfolio. Previously she worked for a social enterprise based in Mumbai. She has an MBA from Oxford, a BA from the University of Virginia and over a decade of experience working in the social sector space in India and regionally. You can find her at linkedin.com/in/shefalisaldanha.
