Corona Virus outbreak in India has brought forth several issues that otherwise would not come to the forefront in a long time. One such glaring issue is the international migration corridor that our nation shares with the rest of the world, for instance, Europe, the Gulf and North America. India got much of its stage 1 cases from these corridors when emigrants returned to their home. Right now, there is a deep desire among the Indian workers and recruiters in the Gulf countries, to come back to India.
According to the World Migration Report, 2020, India stands first when it comes to the number of international migrants across the globe. During the initial phase of the COVID 19 outbreak, India has rescued several citizens from Italy and China. Lots of migrants returned to India from Europe, the Gulf and America in the past few months. But on 22nd March, India finally put a restriction on all international travel to prevent further proliferation of the Coronavirus.
Punjab is facing extreme threats because of 70% of the Indian emigrants in Italy are based in Punjab only. Northern Italy is the epicentre of the COVID 19 outbreak in the country, and it is this place only where most of the Punjab emigrants are located. In Spain too, migrants from Punjab are heavily located.
Punjab can be the epicentre in India because of the 55,669 returnees from the UK, US, Spain, and Italy. The government has traced by now only 30,000 of these returnees.
As many as 3, 50,000 Indian emigrants are stranded in the UK since no evacuation took place from this country.
Migrants are facing acute problems of job loss, and hence they are getting extremely desperate to return to their home country. This has led to the spike in a number of COVID 19 positive cases in Kerala. States like Delhi, Tamil Nadu, Maharashtra, UP, Jharkhand, Orissa etc. all are facing the risk of COVID 19 outbreak.
These emigrants are facing discrimination and ostracism in their own villages. They are not being allowed to collect water in public spaces. Police are also getting phone calls regarding emigrant returns in specific areas. Health personnel, doctors, police and a lot more people are similarly facing ostracism. The risk of contagion, as well as the rampant panic and unawareness, is making it furthermore challenging to cope up with this deadly, cureless pandemic.
