 Hello and welcome to Dispatches from India, a show by People's Dispatch. This show is dedicated to covering key issues from across the country. In this episode, we will look at the issues faced by workers during the COVID-19 lockdown which has been extended and the plight of the families of prisoners from Kashmir. We also look at the success of the state of Kerala in containing the pandemic and the steps it plans to take. Our first story is on the situation of migrant workers. India entered its fourth week of the lockdown on April 15th. Prior to that, Prime Minister Narendra Modi had announced that the country-wide lockdown would be extended for three more weeks until May 3rd. The country is still facing a rising number of cases. As of 5pm local time on April 18th, the country had 14,792 cases of which 12,289 were active, as many as 488 people have died. Meanwhile, the situation of the poor continues to worsen. In the reports of the last few weeks, we had seen how migrants had begun fleeing India's big cities in large numbers. As of April 12th, 32 migrants had died in road accidents alone after the lockdown. They are among the 181 people who died due to lockdown-related distress across the country. Those who remain back in the city's face an uphill struggle. Our team spoke to migrant workers in India's capital city of New Delhi. Here is what one of them, who comes from the state of West Bengal, has to say. My name is Sajid sir. Sir, I am from Maldatown of West Bengal. Maldatown is our district. We work here, we stay here because of lockdown, our stay has become very difficult. Lot of difficulty in getting money or food, we are surviving somehow. Till now we have received no relief. Let's see if government helps us in the future. We will try to receive some help, that's our hope. I used to work in a school, received no money after the lockdown. So our household is facing lot of problems regarding food etc. It is uncertain when we will get some relief from the government. I haven't received money from the beginning of this month. On the 17th, we don't get our jobs back after the lockdown ends. We will have to return to our native places. We have to survive somehow. We have to survive. No, no, we could not understand, we thought it was only for one day on the 21st. Then we thought we can survive for 14-15 days, maximum one month. But now we are realizing the condition is back. Now it has been extended up to 3rd and there is no guarantee of it not being further extending. Now we don't know how our kids will eat. We are hoping for some government help. Definitely we will try to go home if the government arranges something. At the village we do farming, all the situation is not very good there. But we will manage with the food we will produce. We will have to go home. We don't want our kids to suffer here. So we hope that the government provides us with train or bus as soon as possible. That's our request from the government. Surveys have proved that these are not isolated instances and are not restricted to New Delhi. A country-wide survey of over 11,000 workers found that about half of the migrant workers stranded in the cities had ration that would last for less than a day. About 96% of the surveyed workers had not received ration from the government and 70% had not received any cooked food. The numbers were the most grim in Uttar Pradesh when none of the 1,611 workers surveyed had received any ration from the government so far. Our team also spoke to a labourer in the city of Chennai in the south who is experiencing very similar problems. I am from West Bengal, Murushidabad district, Police Chowk, Lal Gala. We had come from West Bengal to Chennai for work. One month ago lockdown happened so my work has stopped. Because the work has stopped we are stuck in absolute crisis. I don't even have money. I have nothing to eat so I want to tell the government to please arrange for our food or else arrange to send us back to our village. In our second story we look at the families of prisoners from Kashmir. In August last year in a sudden move the Indian government abrogated the constitutionally mandated autonomy of the state of Jermu and Kashmir. It then split the state into two union territories which are directly under the control of the central government. Today the people of Kashmir do not have any say in their governance. Around the same time this happened many people in the state were arrested. These include politicians but also common people. Many of these people were sent to prisons in other states such as Uttar Pradesh and remain behind bars till today. With the COVID-19 pandemic spreading across the city the families of these prisoners are extremely worried about their fate. The news click team spoke to some of these families. Only members of Kashmiri prisoners who have been lodged in different jails across India since article 370 was scrapped expressed fear and anxiety in the wake of COVID-19 outbreak that has gripped the world. We have been released from the Uttar Pradesh and taken out to Agra in Uttar Pradesh. We have met once in August. We have not seen or heard of Agra from August till now. We have not heard of Agra from August till now. We have not heard of Agra from August till now. We know that the world is in a very big trouble at the moment. We do not know about Agra from August till now. No phone contact. If there is a phone contact then we think that it is OK. Agra has been given a red zone in the Uttar Pradesh. I am saying this from the government that if any one of them is released from the prison then the whole prison will be in jail. If we go to Agra or bring him here then we cannot even see him. We have talked to him for 8 months. Neither we have any information about him. I went here with the S.F.P. and asked him to bring him here. He said that he would shift tomorrow. He would shift tomorrow. He will shift on 5th January. The court is also giving us a second date on 1st January. The problem is that our brother is tied to August 5th. We have to thank God that our brother should be released. The Supreme Court has also appealed that these people should be released. But they say that they have nothing to do. How many people have been killed but nobody has been released yet. We are poor. We have nothing. My father's name is Abdul Rashid Aare. He has been released from Agra's prison for the past 9 months. The day he was released from the prison on 2nd August, there was a new trade. It was evening time. The police came and took him out of the house. At night he was sent to Agra. We do not know about him. We went to meet him at 15th October. After 15th October, we do not know what is going on there. What is happening with him? We think that if God does not do it, if one person can be released, then the whole prison can be released. We are very much in fear that we do not know what will happen. And finally, we go to the South Indian state of Kerala, which is ruled by a communist government. Kerala was the first state in the country to register a case of COVID-19. Hundreds and thousands of residents of the state work in other countries. So the state faced a risk of high number of infections. However, the government was prepared and through a very thorough process managed to contain the number of infections. Today, Kerala has the best recovery rate in India. The state has also won praise for its variety of economic measures that have helped the poor and the workers in this time of crisis. Kerala has been able to do this despite the fact that there has not been much support from the central government and the right-wing Prime Minister, Narendra Modi. The state's government and policy makers remain vigilant. Yet they are also looking at what lies ahead after COVID-19. We spoke to the Finance Minister of Kerala, Thomas Isaac on what are the sectors that would be most affected and what are the plans for reopening these sectors. I have no illusion this pandemic is going to end in May. I think we are going to have a long, a year period or year and a half period where COVID is going to be the new normal. We have to learn to live with it. So we are thinking, okay, we should devise a strategy of isolating all our elderly and vulnerable populations. It may come to about 15-20% of the population. They strictly stay indoors. And then we want to reopen our economy. They are there, they will be monitored on a regular basis and if they have some problems, they will be immediately under. Luckily, we have got, I think, one of the biggest data base on health. No, we didn't get it, the WHO. We have got their tuberculosis program, generated data. So we are thinking of some big data analytics to have simulation studies done to draw up a strategy for this. This is the thinking. Now having done that, how do you open up? You start immediately with agriculture. Even under strict lockdown, we are promoting household weight work cultivation. Okay. Now we can extend it. Then you go into the cottage industry, slipper-blood industry, smoke-scale industries and so on. Then you take a given preference for your export industry because the export industry used like cashew processing choir and so on. You don't break the contract, you may lose the market in future and so on. There are long run implications for future. Therefore, you will be relaxing them. Of course, trade and so on is there. So systematically you have to draw up a plan and that plan has been, outline has been made by a committee which has been appointed. Now impact of COVID is going to be very different on different sectors. For example, commercial crops. They are going to be least affected, I would say. To be immediate in bank because the demand for this material, raw material are going to go down because of recession, price are going to come down, etc. But trees are there. So I think that would be the sector which is least affected. But you know what we are afraid of? Mortally afraid of what's going to happen to our sustainable migration. Migrant workers in the Gulf and Europe and so on. They contribute to about 35% of our income equal to 35% of GDP. So now it seems like a larger number would be returning. Because there is no job there, recession there. Therefore they all will have to come back. They cannot survive in Gulf without a job. And we want to, we are, they are our citizens and they have let me help. Rehabitating them is going to be a big, big challenge. Biggest challenge that Kerala is going to face. Not really rehabilitating them. You have to quarantine everybody. And nobody knows the numbers. I mean 100,000, 200,000, 300,000. One doesn't know. It's going to be worse than Kuwait war. Where we had to take in something like 60,000, 70,000 people. But now this is going to be much, much larger. So this is one problem, one issue that we know. There are sectors like tourism, for example, which, which will take a long time. Okay, tourism is not going to open up. But we want to plan for the next season, December. December starts the new season. And we'll start the marketing now. That's the park will start. Thinking that things will be normal by December. We are not going to lie back and see December to come, but we'll start. And I think Kerala, Resilient Kerala will be our brand name. You know, all these people from USA, Britain, and so on who are marooned in Kerala. They are living from Kerala with a great impression. Those who have been in our hospitals, their testimony is they wouldn't have got better treatment in Europe. So I think we'll utilize them also and plan. So what I want to say is exit strategy is going to be much more complicated because it is not an exit from COVID. COVID will be there until herd immunity comes up or they get a vaccine for that. And one doesn't know these uncertainties. So I think we will have. One sector is the China we have to learn on the hell that way. Really, it's a great job. But we can't do that. What I read today in the economy is that 80% of the factory production is back. It's something amazing. The whole layout of the factories are being changed to accommodate social distancing. And the kind of unheard kind of technological changes that are being introduced. They are coping up. They don't want to give up the markets. They have to be ready for the first ones to be in the market. Maybe we could learn a little bit from the pharmaceutical industry in Kerala. The medical devices and so on and so forth. And this is appropriate time to make a step forward into that. We have a long thinking. We have a health sector which is appreciated all over. So maybe we should have a sector like the pharmaceutical also. Some factories like the Safarullah did kind of in Bangladesh. I found we have a public sector unit, KSDP Snape. They tell me they're just waiting for the license. This organ transplant. The patient has to take lifelong some cycles. It costs 250 rupees now. This is telling me that they are willing to produce it for 30 rupees. This is the difference. Okay. So maybe we should have a medical device and pharmaceutical industry within Kerala. This would be appropriate time to push this. We are thinking about this exit plan. That's all we have in this episode of Dispatches from India. We'll be back next week with the latest news from the country. Until then, keep watching People's Dispatch. Thank you.