Now Delhi is not far!

Kshitiz Kant; Lucknow

India's unemployment was already soaring, but this lockdown has brought many labourers on the verge of starvation.

83% of India's population dwells in the rural areas. Labourers are now jobless who had returned to their native land from the big cities, or still staying in quarantine camps of the states, after the announcement of shutdown this week.

Prime Minister, Narendra Modi, in his speech to the nation on March 19 last month had first called upon to the people to stay in their homes under Janta Curfew held on March 22 for a day.

He had appealed to the people to go on the balconies or  windows of their homes to ring the bells, make clapping and other ways to pay gratitude of performing hard duties to serve sufferers of pandemic COVID-19 for 5 minutes on being ended of this curfew.

It is now clear with the fatalities going on in the world that many countries are in the trap of this unidentified pandemic.

The day by day deaths toll are constantly rising.

Seeing the  emergency of the people's health  PM on March 24 declared country to be fully lockdown mid-night of March 24/25.

The country is observing 21 days of lockdown since then. However the announcement by PM gave people 4 hours to fix themselves to face this health emergency.

Many people are peasants who were there to earn daily wages so that they could have helped their families whether they were in their native homes or they were with them on the working sites.

After the shutdown of working places they had come under unemployment and began to return to their homes, but the homes were miles away from the employers where they were on work.

Now the employers began to obviate from these daily workers so not to make a mutual concession.

Sudden surge of people on railway stations and on bus stations overcrowded these places, but there every buses were parked and the trains were in yards of station after observing lockdown.

Two types of toughness emerged -- first that none were following the social distancing guidelines to safe themselves from the pandemic infections; second they were now jobless to how they would have managed their daily meal if they had stayed, so their escape from there were the need of the hours.

They had mere option  was that to leave the cities, so they started their journeys onfoot to go back home.

A few of them were marching with their babies sitting on lap and a few with the bale of their valuables on heads were going on across the National Highway.

This exodus' first journey was seen from Delhi upto Lucknow by on foot, then by buses upto their native home districts.

The government of UP then had come in action and the atrocities police over these under media pressure was a little got soft; UPSRTC department began to help these needy and the buses were carrying these people to the native districts.