Having failed India’s migrant workers, the Modi government is now trying to execute a spin. In a series of TV interviews, Union Home Minister Amit Shah has woven a new narrative around the government’s failure of hastily-crafted orders. In an after-the-event rationalisation, he claims that the initial ban on the movement of migrant workers and government facilitation after 1 May were calibrated, carefully planned moves.
Amit Shah told an interviewer, “We are sensitive to the migrant workers. In the first month of the lockdown, our main concern was that even if the migrant workers face some difficulty, they should be protected from COVID-19, that these people leave gradually. And when they do, all facilities in their home states are in place, the hospitals are in good shape, the quarantine facilities and doctors are ready. So we started their movement from 1 May.”