Over 50% of Bihar migrants eat once a day

Patna: A first-of-its-kind survey on the state of migrant workers who have returned to their homes in Bihar has revealed some worrying facts about their worsening situation. More than 50 per cent of those surveyed are only having one meal a day, the debt situation has worsened for around 70 per cent of the workers and less than 1 per cent of the workers feel that their savings are enough. Also, none of the workers reported receiving any kind of cash assistance during the lockdown while they were stranded.

The survey, which was conducted on 177 workers who had returned from various parts of the country to 15 districts of Bihar, is by the NGO Action Aid India. The research done on the residents of Bihar who had gone out to other states for work, is part of a larger pan-India study that the organisation, which has been working with informal workers and on the issue of urban homelessness, has been carrying out for some time now. Migrant workers reported being stranded on an average for 18 days before they could even begin their journey back home. To start, the workers were asked the reasons for vacating their homes in the cities where they had gone to work.

Most of the respondents, nearly a third, said that they were evicted by their landlords. The next big reason for the migrant workers for vacating their homes was because 26 per cent of them did not have any jobs to survive on."Our rapid assessment from the state of Bihar shows us that around 82 per cent of respondents lost their jobs and returned to their home districts.

More than 60 per cent of them returned home without receiving any wages from their last employer in their destination cities," the report states. The loss of wages and the hardships endured by the workers since then have taken a toll on the amount of food and water that they have been consuming since.