On May 25, 2020, in the American city of Minneapolis, a white police officer murdered a 46-year-old African American man George Floyd by kneeling on his neck.Social Justice activists all over America were outraged and staged a flurry of protests against this brutality.

From that day onwards, the city of New York was transformed from a centre of the global epidemic into a stronghold of street protests. Social Justice-lovers all over the world closely witnessed the people’s struggle. Even the most vociferous advocates of social equality in the Indian subcontinent waited with bated breath that the common people will rise to challenge the authoritative rule of the current regime. However, it seems their sentiment was not shared by the entire Indian society.

For a few weeks before the incident in America, In India, we were seeing the mass exodus of millions of workers from the cities hundreds of kilometres back to their homes in the villages.

The millions of workers, without challenging the might of the state in any form, simply picked up their bundles and embarked on arduous and painful journeys. It was as if in their mind they had become a foreigner in their own land. Guru Nanak says the truth: Mann Pardesi jo theeya, sab des paraya (If the mind becomes a stranger, then the world seems stranger too).

These inland foreigners just wanted to return home. A small part of conscientious middle-class, got active on the ground, endeavoured beyond their capacity to ensure that the working people reach their homes safely. Many have written articles describing the plight of the workers.

However, there are still some questions which remain unaddressed and demand our deepest attention and consideration:

Why didn’t the workers consolidate themselves and challenge the landlords against their eviction from the rented accommodations?

Why didn’t they approach the police to lodge complaints against the landlords?

Why didn’t they ransack to the storehouses in large numbers?

As per the Union Minister, Nitin Gadkari, these food stores have surplus stock of wheat and rice for the next three years.

Some of the workers took to the streets to demand that the government arrange for their immediate and safe return home. The police rained downs blows on such workers, there were clashes in many places.

The question is not only what happened and how it happened. It is also:

What kind of mentality prompted the workers to be so insistent about going home in their villages?

Why did the cities estrange them?

Why did the workers not lay any claim to the city?

Why did they not assert their rights over the city?

After all, it is over the claims that wars are fought on.It may yield Defeat or Victory. When there is no claim, there is no war.In this time of crisis, the cities are also in shambles. What is the politico-economic fabric of the Indian subcontinent that has shaped such a mindset? The present article attempts to address this question.

Migration of Workers and the forms of Urbanization

The forms of urbanization from 1947 to the present can be divided into two parts. During the four decades from 1950 to 1990, the growth of industrialized cities in the Indian subcontinent was moderate. Even the service sector was not developed due to which the lack of employment opportunities could not attract the workers from the rural to the urban areas. A few cities, developed as industrial centres in the colonial period, continued to hold the same importance even after the Transfer of Power in 1947.

The cities, called the icons of modernity (e. g. Chandigarh), were developed not as industrial but as centres of administrative and political activities. In the first four decades, rural labour continued to be engaged at the village level for two reasons: one, the practice of following the caste-based hereditary work; two, increased employment opportunities in agriculture sector as a result of government investment to increase productivity.

As a result, the rural areas of Punjab, an epicentre of ‘Green Revolution’, attracted migrant labour from other states of India. The agricultural sector has always been needed as temporary migrant labour. More labour force is required only during sowing or harvesting, and the same force returns home after the completion of the work season.

The neo-liberal policies of 1991-92 opened the cities for construction and services sector. India entered the construction and services sector from the farming sector, in the process bypassing the industrial stage. These areas expanded, increasing more opportunities for work and wages (albeit temporarily) than the rural areas.

A large number of rural workers migrated to the cities from their own and outlying states. The devastation of caste-based practices, stagnation in and mechanization of agriculture pushed the workers out of the agricultural sector on a large scale.

The migration of rural workers to the cities is usually of two types: first, those who migrate from the remote villages to work in the cities and metropolises and live in inhuman conditions. It was this labour force that moved back to the villages amid the ongoing coronavirus crisis.

Second, those who leave early in the morning from nearby villages in search of work in the towns, cities etc. and return home at sunset. Their workplace remains the town or city; the resting place at their home in the village. Out of these workers, the Dalit communities in most of the villages preferred migrating to cities.

As the cities came to a standstill during the lockdown, these people also returned to agriculture and MGNREGA, silently. In recent years, much before this pandemic, Dalits have stood up for their rights in some villages of Punjab, demanding a share in the reserved common land on annual lease.

These struggles still continue with so much fervour that it does not appear we are living in the time of Corona pandemic. While the state apparatuses rule arbitrarily, the rural Dalit community struggles for land rights. What is the situation of the villages in other states is a matter of scrutiny.

Male and caste dominant temporary migrant labour

There are three main characteristics of the form of migrant labour arising from the political economy developed in the absence of the industrial revolution: first, male-dominated; second, migration as caste groups; and third, the inability to be a permanent citizen/resident.

The teenage boys migrate to the cities in search of work. Women are confined to homes, villages and nearby towns. Caste groups, in the cities, become conducive in securing some work and a roof over one’s head. It is less painful for the family to send their earning son to a foreign land with a male workers of his caste and community.

The labour force, compelled to work in the unknown terrains, get to share their sorrow with someone from their community.

The workers usually migrate to the city alone. If ever their wives and kids join them in the city after years of hard work; the rest of the family members, due to high cost of living in the cities, are forced to stay back in the village. The irony is that the workers build the cities but the city has no place for them.

The wheel of time turns, ages come and pass. The old or weak labour force, unable to secure any work or shelter in the city, returns to the villages. The new and young force replaces the old one. The labour force, both at their home and in urban construction and service sectors where they are employed as casual labourers, always remains in a state of flux.

The social (caste based discrimination) and the economic crisis of the villages pushed them out to the cities. The urban crisis has now forced them to return to the villages again. Rejected at both the levels, the workers find themselves swinging like pendulums between the village and the city.

This form of labour is essential for the profiteering of employers. The employer needs the cheapest labour for his money. The minimum wage of the worker is directly related to the maximization of profit of the employer. The worker does not earn enough to live in a city with his family but as the rural areas are less expensive and less remunerative than the cities, a large portion of the meagre wages of this earning son becomes a boon for the poor family.

Conscientious Students: Swinging like a Pendulum

One more question. What happened to the conscientious groups, in this time of the pandemic, promising to bring a revolution under the leadership of workers? Especially the student groups from colleges and universities who have been a part of active politics, by becoming the activists of various organizations. A large batch of these groups belong to the rural areas.

Almost all of them returned home during the lockdown. Educational institutions were closed and hostels had to be evacuated. Those living on rented accommodation as paying guests had already realized that the lockdown would last a long time, but their departure did not make headlines.

The groups, which had the means and ability to reach home, reached safely to their families in the early stages of the lockdown with some clothes, books and their politics wrapped up in their bags. When the workers took to the streets, a large section of these organizations were lamenting the tragedy while watching it on their TV screens at home or mobile phones.

Their departure is a product of a dilemma. They lack an organic relationship with the city and its working class. Their political idiom is rural but their area of activity is urban. Their concern is for the rural society but they act to organize either students or other urban sections.

The state of mind of both those who want to bring change and whose help they seek in fulfilling their dream by organizing, is one and the same. In fact, this is the dilemma of the entire young generation. The vulnerabilities and uncertainties of the future desist them to cut the umbilical cord of their burdened historical past.

A Samudra Manthan (the mythical ocean churning) is needed to come out of this fix. If it were only amritthat was produced from that churning, one could do it, but it can produce toxic poison too. We fear we may end up with the poison.

Punjabi poet Shiv Kumar Batalvi, while describing this dilemma, said: Na jhaNg ChuTeya na kanpaaTe (I did not leave Jhang, I did not pierce my ears). Referring to the legendary lover and Ranjha, who became an ascetic and found the revolutionary love of Heer, Batalvi states his condition that he could not do anything like Ranjha and hence lived and died loveless.

The mindset that has arisen out of this oscillation has put both the working class and the students into a state of deep despair and numbness. We are like the empty quiver of another legendary lover Mirza, as referred to by Panjabi poet, Amitoj. It is crucial to deal with this dilemma in order to fulfil the dream of revolution.