The incoming rush

The lockdown triggered off by the COVID-19 global pandemic has rendered millions of people jobless across the world. Simultaneously, a large number of people have lost their means of livelihood because of the shutting down of factories, hotels, restaurants, supermarkets, airlines, railways, cinema and so on. Most self-employed people have been also forced to sit idle. In the case of Assam, a large number of people have suddenly become jobless, and that too in far-away places like Kerala, Tamil Nadu, Maharashtra, Punjab, Gujarat and so on. Most of these people had started moving out of their homes in Assam only in the past one decade or so, after having failed to find any employment or livelihood within the state or the region. While there are no government statistics about the exact number of such people working in factories, in the hospitality and tourism sector, in security agencies, food packaging units and so on, unofficial data in circulation often put the number of such people from Assam working in other regions at anywhere between 16 lakh and 18 lakh. This could be a near-accurate guesswork, given the fact that statistics maintained by the State Skill, Employment and Entrepreneurship Department had a couple of years ago put the total number of registered unemployed in Assam at about 20 lakh. There was a time when the ULFA, NDFB and other militant groups had targeted these unemployed youth for recruiting their cadres. With the development of connectivity and infrasructure – whether railway, mobile or banking – a large number of unemployed youth had ventured out of the state for good to seek employment outside. The Government of Assam, in the absence of official data, has by and large started relying on unofficial data to say that 10 to 12 lakh such people working outside are likely to return home because of the sudden loss of employment. How the state is going to handle this sudden rush of such a large number of unemployed persons is a big question. Some people have already expressed apprehension that the presence of such a large number of unemployed people, coupled with the sudden shutdown of various kinds of economic activities, has the potential of giving rise to incidents of crimes in the state. Amid this situation, however the state Panchayat and Rural Development (P&RD) Department has come out with an announcement that it will issue job cards to the migrant workers who are returning to Assam from other states. The department has also stated that this initiative has been taken so that no one has to worry about their livelihood during the pandemic.