Hunger will haunt if phone and internet die tomorrow
Cassandra sent a message in the WhatsApp group “I am busy recharging mobile phones of my people; you go ahead with the call”. After a few hours, she updated how the declaration of the sudden lock-down left the tribal villagers in Aarey Colony and Sanjay Gandhi National Park, in Mumbai, with no cash and food items. Most of these villagers were daily wage workers. They do not have enough savings to survive even a week! It was important for Cassandra to be in communication with them through phone and internet. They sent a list of essentials, which Cassandra paid to the nearest grocery shops via REMOTE AID through different online payment apps.
I was one of the privileged persons, who had not lost her job and was allowed to work from home. There was nothing to worry about, not even the virus. We were sure we didn’t have to go out as we had enough food to sustain for a month; I still couldn’t sleep. The video and images of children, women, and men walking thousands of kilometers for days were haunting me. That’s when I read and found how people like Cassandra are helping hungry humans remotely with the help of phone and internet without going outside.
Since my school days, I have been seeing, how young people leave the village after their board exams, to work in Surat as textile workers, every year. I remembered them and sought help from my colleague Jibitesh, who works with an NGO that works for the rights of textile workers in Surat. They had a list of seven thousand workers, mostly from Odisha, who were not being aided by the local administration.
My friend Shilpashree Jagannathan joined in. We started calling them. We asked them to send videos and images of their rooms and heard their pleas to check the authenticity before we ask for help from the authorities on Twitter. The first post & video we made with those images, made the concerned MP and MLA respond with the promise of help. Soon after that, the thread became viral and few from twitter joined a new WhatsApp group that we formed to help these workers with food supply. We could help five hundred workers out of seven thousand directly.
https://twitter.com/PranayManjari/status/1243944400775831553
Most of these migrant workers face exploitation and discrimination for not being local. They are the non-voter population; they don’t have ration cards, so they are excluded from benefits and the different welfare measures that the government makes for the poor and needy.
While they were surviving on their monthly salary and able to send enough money for their family in Odisha to live, a sudden declaration of lock-down without any clarity forced small factory owners to close down their businesses. Many of the workers were not even paid for the days they worked. There was no clarity of getting new works; they exhausted their savings on buying essential items.
Due to an increase in the number of Corona positive patients, the police became brutal and merciless, if they found anyone on the streets. Community kitchens became inaccessible for them due to fear of police brutality. They called helpline numbers, but most of these helpline numbers were of no help!
It’s ordinary people who became their voice, to reach the authorities. It was an ordinary citizen Shilpashree, who raised her voice on twitter, forcing the authorities to take notice. It was Cassandra who helped thousands of people in Mumbai slums with grocery and food items, to survive. There are hundreds of people I know personally who have been helping poor and migrant workers, not just with food, but arranging medicines, transportation to reach home in this reverse migration, by using technology like social media platforms, phones, and the internet.
I am wondering what will happen to these voiceless people if the phone and the internet die tomorrow. What must have happened in Kashmir that banned phone and internet for months last year? We haven’t heard their stories yet. Phone and internet have empowered common, ordinary citizens as activists. If the phone and internet die tomorrow, hunger will thrive. Hunger will haunt each one of us.
