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Autorickshaws, bicycles: How migrants are covering 1,600-km Mumbai-Gorakhpur journey
Many migrant workers are reaching going to as far as Indore from Mumbai in autorickshaws. Others, who can’t spend money, are heading towards their hometowns on bicycles.
Thousands of migrants are on the move, trying to reach their native places during the nationwide Covid-19 lockdown. And they are leaving in droves from Mumbai, one of the biggest Covid-19 hostspots in the country.
Helping them in their endeavours are autorickshaw drivers from Mumbai who are taking the migrant workers to as far as Indore in Madhya Pradesh. The Mumbai-Agra Road that touches Indore through a bypass road, is seeing a steady stream of autorickshaws from the country’s commercial capital.
Officials and eye-witnesses put the number of these three-wheelers from Mumbai crossing the Indore Bypass Road at 50 every hour.
Mumbai has the highest number of Covid-19 cases for any city in the country and a strict lockdown since late March has taken thousands of autorickshaws and black-and-yellow taxis off the roads there, leaving thousands of drivers and their kin jobless and without adequate cash in hand.
“I have been driving an autorickshaw in Mumbai for the past 12 years. But everything is closed there now. I spent two months digging into my savings but that, too, has run out. I have no choice but to return to my village,” 54-year-old Baleshwar Yadav, who is returning to his native village in Jharkhand, told news agency PTI. He had eight people, including two women and three children, crammed into his three-wheeler.
Many of them are not sure when they will return to Mumbai. “There was no food in Mumbai due to lack of work. We will think of returning to the city later,” said Ajay Yadav (36), hailing from Jaunpur district in Uttar Pradesh.
Deputy Superintendent of Police (Traffic) Umakant Chaudhary said autorickshaws were being allowed to pass only after those inside are subjected to medical screening when they enter the border of Madhya Pradesh.
“We have been seeing a sizeable number of autorickshaws from Mumbai on the Indore Bypass Road over the last one week. We have also received information that some drivers are charging people to transport them to their native places in other states,” the officer said.
The migrants are also riding back home on their bicycles. And some of them live as far as Gorakhpur in Uttar Pradesh or Kalahandi in Odisha.
“Traveling by a truck packed with people will cost me over Rs 3,500, bus journey will cost twice as much. And I have only Rs 700 in my pocket,” said 27-year-old Ramjeevan Nishad, who left Nallasopara to reach Vaisand after a journey of 80 kilometres.
He is part of a group of dozen whose destination is Gorakhpur, which is 1,600 km away.
