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earlier today, i tweeted two reports by @thehindu's @pv_srividya on how krishnagiri district, tamil nadu, is doing a superb job of sending migrant workers back home. the collector had delayed a train till some workers arrived. volunteers were ensuring all workers were fed.
later in the day, i happened to visit hosur railway station with @pv_srividya. In this thread, some pictures (and one wonderful video) of what I saw as everyone readied to send a train-load of workers back home to jharkhand.
while heading there, we had called a few workers to check where they were and heard: "bus mein hain (we are in the bus). What that meant became clearer on reaching. Buses stood at the station, each with workers -- seated (no standing). one by one, each was being emptied.
lots of cops. all in masks. each directing workers into one of two queues.
this is what the queues looked like. all people who had waited for well over two months, running low on money, and wondering how/when to get back home (see how how young everyone is).
one thing that stood about the queue? everyone had been given these tags. which was impressive.
even more impressive? these five youngsters, sans these tags (which means they had not been registered) came to the station anyway. the local admin has decided that no one will be turned away. and so, they were asked to wait while officials figured how to accommodate them.
they were eventually put on the train. the queue moved briskly. as they entered the building, temperatures were taken.
(here, folks queuing to enter the station. in the distance, you can see an yellow bus)
once cleared by the temperature-checkers, they stepped in and were handed a bag of food.
just behind this set of volunteers, another set of volunteers were at work -- busily packing bananas and oranges into bags. these bags were handed over as well -- organisers were instructing workers to open their bags so that these stages could be completed with minimum delay.
these volunteers, incidentally, were muslims. techies, shopfloor workers, doctors... a real cross-section. @pv_srividya had written about them yesterday. https://twitter.com/pv_srividya/status/1264063730465173504
by this time, the workers had their first glimpse of the train waiting for them. stepping onto the platform, still in a queue, they had to hand in their tags and take a train ticket instead.
the train was being filled one coach at a time, in an orderly manner. workers were sent to their coach where a policeman noted down their details -- name, aadhaar, phone, home district, etc.
