Institute for Competitiveness Report studies UP government's handling of migrant crisis
An official government spokesperson, while sharing details of the study last week, said it highlighted the humanitarian crisis of migrant labourers that unfolded in 2020, and focused on how the UP government handled the migrant crisis.
The handling of the migrant crisis by the Yogi Adityanath government in Uttar Pradesh (UP) has been studied in detail by the Institute for Competitiveness (IFC), which has submitted a report on the same to the government.
An official government spokesperson, while sharing details of the study last week, said it highlighted the humanitarian crisis of migrant labourers that unfolded in 2020, and focused on how the UP government handled the migrant crisis. While the spokesperson referred to it as a Harvard study in a statement, the Institute for Competitiveness said subsequently that it is only part of the Microeconomics of Competitiveness network of the Institute of Strategy and Competitiveness at the Harvard Business School and that it is “inaccurate” to refer to it as a “Harvard study”.
The government spokesperson said the Yogi government worked towards the multifold agenda of providing transportation facilities, delivering ration kits, and running health care centres for outbreak prevention.
The migrant labourers mainly relied on daily wages for survival and the state government announced schemes to provide free ration to the migrants, according to him.
The report, IFC said, documented efforts by the UP government on three parameters: migrant support, health infastructure, and livelihood opportunities.
The state government formulated a plan to ensure the safe return of migrants and create employment opportunities. UP government in consonance with the central government took a holistic approach towards addressing the crisis, the government statement said.
Besides providing buses and train services for stranded migrants, the state government also arranged transportation facilities for within-state travel and made efforts to publicise the schemes of the government, the report enumerated.
The state government collaborated with Indian railways and arranged 1604 trains and brought back over 2.1 million migrants through Shramik trains i.e. 80 % of the total migrants who returned to the state.
The state government also set up 18,140 quarantine facilities as per the guidelines issued by National Centre for Disease Control (NCDC) and a total of 1.5 million migrants were quarantined at different points in time.
According to the report, a total of ₹151 crore was transferred to the account of 1.5 million migrants .
IFC said that the report isn’t a comparative study and looks into how the UP government handled the crisis.
(This article, which was originally published in the Lucknow edition of Hindustan Times, has been edited for accuracy. An earlier version referred to the IFC report as a Harvard study, quoting a state government release)
