Lockdown, Lament & Learning: Migrant Children Will Remember It All

These barefoot children, whom India ejected from its cities – will they ever be equal?

The painful visuals will fade – of migrant workers walking hundreds of kilometres from indifferent cities to reluctant villages. Yet, their children will always remember this exodus and the valuable lessons they learnt on how to survive in India.

The children walked carrying their own loads, learning how to stay alive in the summer heat without food or water. Some made it, some didn’t. Like the 12-year-old girl who died on her way from Telangana to Chhattisgarh, a distance of about 150 km. She began walking from the Jayashankar Bhupalpally district and died three days later, one hour away from her home in Bijapur district.

She was employed in the chilli fields, leaning how to live in a country that does not take care of poor children, so that they did not have to earn.