Bengaluru’s workers suffer as Karnataka’s response to COVID-19 marked by delays, inefficiency
“The situation is dire among the working class,” an interim report on the effect of the COVID-19 pandemic and lockdown on Bengaluru’s informal-sector and migrant workers noted. “If some particularly vulnerable communities are starving or at the verge of starvation, many others dread the start of the next month when rents have to be paid, loan instalments have to be cleared, ration stock for the house has to be bought.” The report was jointly prepared by trade unions, rights organisations and concerned individuals, and published in two parts, on 23 and 30 March, respectively.
The two-part report highlighted many shortcomings of the Karnataka government’s response to the public-health crisis and demonstrated that in Bengaluru, as has been the case across the country, the informal sector was the worst affected. The organisations involved in the study were The All India Central Council of Trade Unions, the Karnataka Domestic Workers Rights Union, the Garment and Textile Workers Union and the Savithri Bai Phule Mahila Sanghatane. The first part of the report was based on testimonies from 65 people—which rose to 83 people in the second part—across different sectors, including garment workers, domestic workers, street vendors, construction workers and gig-economy workers.
It warned the government about the plight of Bengaluru’s informal and migrant workers and the need for immediate state intervention. The trade unions and rights organisations pointed out that social-security measures announced by the government were yet to reach the most vulnerable sections of the society. These measures included a Rs 200-crore package intended to contain the pandemic, provide a social-security pension, set up fever clinics for potential COVID-19 cases and serve meals to the poor in the state’s Indira canteens as part of its subsidised-food programme. But many of these policies were introduced very late, and others were insufficient and poorly implemented, leaving those worst affected by the lockdown—predominantly the city’s massive informal-sector workers—in dire straits.
“The very unfortunate things is that current crisis caused by the coronavirus pandemic has revealed the social reality of the migrant workers,” Clifton D’Rozario, the national secretary of the All India Central Council of Trade Unions, told me. “Currently in Karnataka, there are lakhs of migrant workers without any food. They don’t have any money in their hand and they have no work. The response from the state has been quite abysmal. The state government is completely at a loss in dealing with this. It is a human-rights issue and question of survival.”
According to a 2011 parliamentary response, a total of 63.83 lakh people from Karnataka’s urban areas lived below the poverty line. The interim report prepared by the trade unions noted that over seventy percent of Karnataka’s workforce is from the informal sector, according to a state government survey from 2016. It is in this context that the trade unions studied the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on Bengaluru’s informal sector, and the efficacy of the government’s response.
“Our survey shows that food security is beginning to get increasingly threatened and many workers are anticipating that accessibility and affordability of food stuff is going to get much worse,” the first part of the report noted. “While some are within the food safety-net, through ration cards, many are out of this. Food insecurity is particularly high for gig-economy workers in the transport sector who have been badly affected by the closure of food stalls. Closure of street vending has resulted in near total loss of income for vendors, thereby massively affecting their ability to survive.”
The report made recommendations under several different categories, including food security, housing, safety and emergency relief, as well as steps to protect jobs and wages. Among several measures to protect the livelihoods of Bengaluru’s informal-sector workers, the report noted that the government should immediately allocate a package of Rs 20,000 crore in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic. It also stated that the government should pass an executive order “prohibiting retrenchment/termination /refusal of employment and/or reduction in wages by any employers.” To ensure food security, the report recommended, “Universal allocation of food packets weekly to the doorstep.” Finally, the report stated that the government should set up a task force to implement the proposed measures.
Rozario said that some of the recommendations were met though recent government orders—such as preventing house owners from evicting tenants and providing shelter to migrant workers—but food and income insecurity remained an immediate and urgent concern. Towards the end of March, the government announced steps towards addressing these concerns. On 18 March, the chief minister BS Yediyurappa announced in the state assembly that the government that a fund of Rs 200 crore had been earmarked for the fight against the COVID-19 pandemic. On 28 March, the government stated that it would provide free food to the poor at the state-run Indira canteens at three allotted time periods in the day.
Yet, Rozario believed that these measures were too little and too late. “The budget is definitely not going to meet the requirements,” he told me. “In an unprecedented situation like this, normal response and normal budgetary allocation are not going to work. The government cannot be stingy at this point. It should think of the health and safety of everyone. Unfortunately, that is not the approach.”
Similarly, the trade unions also found that the city’s Indira canteens were not easily accessible for the city’s poor during a lockdown with travel restrictions. In its second part, published on 30 March, the report focussed on how the lockdown and the consequent loss of income had affected the lives of Bengaluru’s informal-sector workers. The report noted, “Many of our survey respondents said that the Indira canteens were not located nearby their houses. With severe restrictions on travelling and the police exercising strict and sometimes violent vigilance, most respondents were not willing to travel with family members to these canteens.”
The state’s decision to provide free food at the Indira canteens was announced days after the Karnataka High Court had made an oral request to the government. “Please see that food packets are prepared at Indira canteens and distributed to these daily wage employees who've lost their earnings,” the judge G Narendar had stated in court, on 23 March. But less than a week into the free-food programme, the Karnataka government withdrew its order, citing the reason that it suspected private contractors of hiking the outstanding amounts in their bills. On 3 April, the government issued a fresh order noting that the Indira canteens would continue providing food at subsidised rates.
Clifton pointed to another concern arising out of the India canteens food scheme—the inevitable crowding that it would invite. “That is a very short-sighted approach to addressing the issue,” Clifton said. “The lock down is to minimise contact and ensure social distancing. Centralised food packet distribution centres would defeat the purpose of lock-down.” But the government did not seem to recognise these concerns, going by an article written by the chief minister about the state’s response to the public-health crisis, on 31 March. Yediyurappa wrote, “The government has directed Deputy Commissioners to take over one convention centre or wedding hall in every ward within municipal corporation limits to house construction labourers and migrant workers.”
According to Clifton, the government’s approach revealed a lack of understanding about the situation of migrant workers in the state. “All migrant workers are not homeless people, they could be living in construction-worker colonies, informal settlements, rented premises, shacks and sheds,” he said. “The government is contemplating to bring them all to these wedding halls. That is going to be a public health nightmare . The government should instead ensure that the workers are safe and secure wherever they are. Create awareness, ensure sanitisation facilities, provide soap water, masks, gloves etc. So that they are protected and ensure them food and wage security. Provide them food grains and cooking gas at places where they have been living for months or years.”
In his article, the chief minister added, “The Karnataka government will release social security pension of two months in advance for the poor, additional working days amount will be released in advance under the Mahatma Gandhi Employment Guarantee Act scheme and two months ration will be supplied immediately. Also, 21 lakh construction workers will be paid Rs 1,000 per person.”
But according to HV Vasu, an activist and the editor of a Bengaluru-based tabloid called Nyaya Patha, these measures were introduced too late. “It has already been one week into the lockdown,” he told me, on 31 March. “It is only today that the government had convened a meeting of organisations to meet the food requirements. When I tried the government helpline to arrange food for unorganised workers in an area, it did not work out. Things have just started moving now.”
Vasu also said that the government was paying the constructions workers by taking money out of the state government-run Karnataka Building and Other Construction Workers Welfare Fund. “The government has diverted around Rs 10,000 crore from the construction-workers fund,” he said. “The government has not released money from its treasury but from workers’ fund. Though we object to this, we felt it is better that people are getting something now. But even that is not helping to a great extent … I get at least ten calls from different areas everyday people requesting food and assistance,” he added. Sylvia Karpagam, a Bengaluru-based public-health doctor and researcher, spoke of a similar situation. “People are calling from everywhere saying we need food, we are hungry especially from migrant-workers colonies,” she told me.
The central government, too, had proposed some social-security measures following the lockdown’s disproportionate impact on the country’s migrant workers. On 26 March, Nirmala Sitharaman, the union finance minister, announced the Prime Minister Gareeb Kalyan scheme, which she said would be worth Rs 1.7 trillion and comprise two parts—cash transfer and food security. But according to the second report published by the trade unions and rights organisations, the social-security measures announced by the centre as well as the state have not yet helped improve the situation.
“The social security measures announced by the union finance minister is complete bogus,” Vasu said. “It was actually a mockery and taking people for fools.” According to him, the government had merely repackaged existing schemes and commitments and announced it as if it were a response to the COVID-19 pandemic. “The government was supposed to increase the MGNREGA wages last year,” he said. The measures announced by Sitharaman included increasing the MGNREGA wages by Rs 20, which Vasu pointed out would only fetch an additional Rs 2,000 for 100 days of work, and only by March next year. “The finance minister is calling this a coronavirus package,” he noted. “Similarly, they were anyways supposed to give Pradhan Mantri Kisan Kalyan Scheme. Calling that too a corona package is a terrible thing to do.”
As of 5 pm on 2 April, Karnataka had reported a total of 124 confirmed COVID-19 cases, with 41 active cases in the Bengaluru Urban district. On 31 March, the state government issued a circular announcing a new measure in its fight to curb the spread of the pandemic—the setting up of “fever clinics” to screen suspected cases. The circular noted, “The first point of contact for suspected COVID-19 patients in the state now onwards shall be ‘Fever Clinics’ only.” It stated that 60 urban health-centres and 36 private hospitals had been designated as fever clinics in Bengaluru, which would be increased depending on the number of cases. “As on today, nearly 60 fever clinics are operational,” the circular stated.
“Each fever clinic will have a COVID-19 Rapid Response team (CRR) comprising of one doctor, 2 nurses and a health care worker. Fever clinics will function from 9am to 5pm on all days of the week,” the circular noted. The patients who come to the clinic would first be screened on the basis of their body temperature and symptoms, following which they would be classified as safe or suspected. Safe patients would be asked to go back home, with prescriptions related to their illness, while suspected COVID-19 patients would be sent to swab-collection centres, according to the circular. They would then be kept at a quarantine facility until their test results arrived.
The circular noted that while screening and swab tests are conducted for free at the state-run fever clinics, two private clinics that are functioning as fever clinics and testing centres could charge up to a maximum Rs 4,500—the upper limit fixed by the Indian Council of Medical Research. But on 3 April, the Deccan Herald reported that many private labs had expressed their inability to function as fever clinics. The report further noted that the government had not conducted any consultations with the private labs before issuing the circular. Karpagam said that the state’s public-health system is “not prepared for any emergency so of course aren’t prepared for corona.” She added, “The testing and treatment facilities are not accessible to people in remote areas. We don't have required the lab facilities and staff.”
But the state government has been pursuing this fever-clinic approach aggressively. Days before the government issued the circular regarding fever clinics, K Sudhakar, the minister of medical education, had said, “Fever clinics in key vital areas of Bengaluru is the first-line of defence for us against coronavirus. All urban primary health centres will be converted into fever clinics as part of crisis management in the city.”
Meanwhile, R Ravindra, the president of the Private Hospitals and Nursing Home Association, reportedly suggested to the chief minister that all Indira canteens, too, should be converted to fever clinics. According to Karpagam, private institutions play an important role in the Karnataka’s health-policy formulation, and the government was considering the proposal. She was bewildered by the idea. “When they are trying to grapple with people having no food, Indira canteens are the lifeline for many people,” Karpagam said. “Now they want to convert that to hospitals. Do they want the people to be diagnosed of corona but starve? Is that what a policy-maker should think?”
Karpagam added that “implementing a lockdown without any efforts to strengthen the public-health system lacks any logic.” Referring to the slew of announcements made by the state towards the end of March, Karpagam said that these decisions were “a knee-jerk reaction to public pressure and not a proper, planned strategy.”
Officials in the state’s health department were either unavailable for a comment or directed me to the others, who in turn asked me to speak to the officials I spoken to first. Sudhakar, who is in charge of the government’s response to COVID-19, Pankaj Kumar Pandey, the state’s health commissioner, and Suresh Shastri, the state’s education and communication special officer, did not respond to multiple calls. Emails to the chief minister and the chief secretary also went unanswered.