The Case of Human Suffering: Acts of Rationalising the Denial of Agency

The period of the last three months, as India has attempted to brace itself to meet the onslaught of an exponential rise in number of Covid-19 cases in spite of having enforced a lockdown in four stages, has borne witness to numerous tragedies that have emerged out of the travails of the migrant labour community. The government of the day, in imposing a complete lockdown, required all Indians to ‘stay at home’. Yet they appear to hav forgotten that for this large group of people, home was where they had come from and not where they were. What exacerbated this situation of crisis was that this ‘place where they were’ saw them more as a liability from ‘the place they were native to’ and so only reluctantly made minimal arrangements for them.