Letter to BS: Migrant workers truly represent the ethos of India

The migrant workers have started to return to the states that they left at the onset of the Covid-19 pandemic. They have shown no rancour or disillusionment, either with the government or their employers. They truly represent the ethos of this nation, that of patience, forbearance and goodwill. They marched hundreds of miles to their villages with hope and fortitude for better times ahead, even as they patiently bore the vicissitudes of an insensitive bureaucracy. The strength of this nation comes from the moral fibre of its lower strata of citizens, even as the upper echelon often weakens it with its selfishness.
 

For a nation that could handle in its stride the massive demonetisation with a four-hour notice, the Covid with heraldry, was but a second run with a different script. The villain had changed robes but the hero was same in both — the lowly common man. He is as indefatigable now as he was in 2016. He managed with sheer perseverance and jugaad, purely on the enduring sense of brotherhood among men in similar distress. As before, the upper and middle class would treat this episode, albeit very long, as no more than a siesta.

R Narayanan  Navi Mumbai

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