 Hello and let's talk about India's role at the World Health Assembly. The WHO is the governing body of the World Health Organization. The 73rd Assembly was held on May 18th and 19th. And as you can guess, the major focus was on COVID-19. The US and some of its allies tried their best to blame China for the disease. The final resolution, however, did not name China or Wuhan and instead called for an independent probe into the origins and progress of the disease. There were many other developments too. Immunisation was declared as a global public health good, but vaccines were not. This opens the door for vaccine firms to profit from the crisis and outcome health activists have been warning against. Meanwhile, India was among the 10 countries elected to the Executive Board of the World Health Organization and India's Health Minister Harshwar Than will be a chairman of the board for a year. However, at this World Health Assembly, India did not show much leadership experts have pointed out. We talked to former Ambassador M.K. Bhadrakumar on this issue. Here's what he had to say. The position of India amid all this debate. So we've seen Prime Minister Modi has said that he's had conversation with some world leaders. But India has not occupied any of its traditional positions where it was a leader of the Global South or for that matter, the BRICS countries have not come together in any meaningful way on this issue. So India is basically nowhere in the global discourse on this issue. Sadly, that is the truth. You have given an exact picture of what is happening. I will only add this to what you said that not only that, India has ganged up with the United States. You may know that exactly one week ago when this opinion was building up in the world community and the United States was getting very acutely conscious that it is being isolated. Pompeo took the initiative to at least have a few people around the United States so that they don't feel lonesome. I think five countries or something like that joined this endeavor on COVID, specifically on COVID, cooperation on COVID. India was one of them. I was absolutely shocked that India was one of them. Now, India has so much of opportunity today, in fact, to take over a leadership role because we have a fairly developed pharma industry. If I were in a leadership position, what do I do? I would work very closely with China and try and see if I can create an atmosphere where this vaccine can also be produced in India. Like some enterprising entrepreneur in Pune or Bangalore managed to do with researchers in Oxford University. Similarly, you could have done it. India has a great tradition in pharmacology. This is the kind of thing India could have done and India could have joined hands with China in making this vaccine and other related drugs at affordable prices to the developing countries. This is the kind of role which India is uniquely placed to perform. It would immensely raise India's stature. What do we have here? You have the external affairs minister making a few telephone calls then distributing hydrochloroxin to a few chaps here and there. This is India's role. And then Prime Minister tutoring now and then with Trump that we will fight shoulder to shoulder. They are struggling there in the United States. What is there to fight? We should have actually not gone on these lines with a certain vision that this is a challenge and this is also an opportunity for India to play a global role. We've just goofed up completely. Now the only good thing is that in this world health assembly a new executive body has been elected and India has been elected. So now even now you look what is the kind of backing the sentiments, the groundswell of opinion favouring India among the developing countries, African countries and so on. So it's on that basis that India got elected into the executive council. Russia is also there in the executive council and Russia also has a similar approach towards this that this vaccine should be universally available. Work together, now build on that, but I really don't know whether we will ever do that because that means crossing swords with Trump because this is going to be disturbing. Trump's pharma industry connections. So I can't understand why, what is this policy? There is no policy. The overall tilt there to the people to the United States, that has become very pronounced through the last couple of years is plain to see, especially after this in the second term, is plain to see. I think the external affairs ministry is interested basically only in developing a relationship with the United States. That is India's foreign policy today as far as I can see. So in that line, whatever fits in, fits in. Otherwise we are not interested. This has come to be the policy. It's very tragic. Thank you so much Ambassador Bhadrakumar for talking to us. In our next section, we bring you a report from Chennai which describes the state of migrant workers. Chennai has been among the worst affected cities by the disease and migrant workers there face a variety of problems. Take a look. The work has begun. But after one day, we have been forced to wait for three days. But this is not going to work. That is why we are trying to go home. That is why if anyone can help, I can help them. Mr. Tamil Nadu, please help us. We are not getting food or tea. We haven't got payment for two months. Please help us. Hello, I am Madan Kumar Mahato. I am in Chennai. Please help Chennai Government. We are in trouble. We are not getting food or tea. We have a lot of problems. But the work has begun. But after four days, we are getting money. We haven't got any money for two months. We are in trouble. Please help us. We are in trouble. We are in trouble. We have been in trouble for two months. Mr. Tamil Nadu, the major destination for migrant workers is the disease that may fall for almost a decade now. The wealth of the migrant workers comes to construction activities and most of them come from Polica and Andhra Pradesh. And now it has expanded into manufacturing. There is a significant number of migrant workers in manufacturing as well as in ancillary services of various kinds from hospitality, hotels, to tea shops, all kinds of work including housekeeping and security services. The volume of migrant workers has also increased and also the geographical spread across Tamil Nadu. But even today one can certainly take care of that. Most of the migrant workers are located in the commercial and industrial hub. So that is like Chennai, Chennai and the surroundings. Coimbatore, Thirupur is a major drop because of the garment industry, clothing industry there. In the south you have Azurai, one of the sources and then you have some amount of spread including in say for example, towns like Nagapatino which is tourist district and also a religious school you may send there. And you have a lot of migrants doing very, very petty jobs there like owner constructs too. So from being a very small pocket full of labour around Chennai, migrants have come to basically man the entire production domain of Tamil Nadu which has become very, very, which seems to be partly true when the government is now trying to deal with this whole exodus of migrants back to their home states because race-chatting industry, race-chatting economic activity seems to be much more difficult in the absence of migrants because I think the lockdown has also announced on Monday of Tuesday and there has not been even paid for a week or two weeks before that because of lack of jobs. So it was immediate and the government had no clue what to do like both the Central Government and the State Government had no clue what to do and the next thing was the issue of race that they were trying to do because in a couple of weeks in March became April and the race were few and the workers were getting really troubled by the fact that there would be demands on race there were demands on race not as much but there were demands on race and that was created in the state and certainly the government had no answer to that the government could put on these big rules saying no, no, no need to be rent etc but this is not a very streamlined process where the government has actually in this state these are small house owners demanding rent from even weaker migrant fix and it is all in this informal fix so nobody had any records of it nobody knows who is demanding what so effectively the government couldn't do much even in that state and wage payments for the last 30 years was another major issue these workers were sitting not because of their own pollution it was not as if they had withdrawn from work these people wanted work they were guaranteed work and yet because of the government order and the companies couldn't pay for the last company many companies refused to pay for the last company and that was another major issue and eventually we come to the issue of transport back home where still states like Kamenagh and also this is not an issue just of Kamenagh state like the central government is not very cooperative in this regard wrangling about the price of trains etc to host the native states they are unprepared to receive large volumes of workers coming back from COVID affected areas and because Kamenagh also is not very comfortable of willing to send these workers back because they want to meet that specific so they are also drawing it up and what it has amounted to is like thousands and thousands of migrant workers willing to take a thousand kilometer journey back to Khargani, Dengar, Puneetha on foot in this regard we are part of a COVID decision to find for migrant laborers we have set up a helpline on the very first day of the lockdown because we anticipated this would happen but we never thought that this would be the case we would be called in to work at this case so after a few weeks of this work of calling in to my interviews to find out what they want etc not that these needs are consolidated and the government needs to be motivated about what the needs of these workers are so we did a survey and one primary question in that was how many people want to return home and we came up with our survey revealed that 95% of the workers wanted to go home and Starkey even 75% of the workers want to go even if they have jobs even if jobs come back which means basically they were not trusting that the jobs would last and they felt much more comfortable being back home in these trying times of COVID it is only natural to expect that people want to go back home in a crisis especially where there is a lot of credit both health wise and financially it is like a mess and another interesting part the story was that over 60% of the workers had not been paid wages their wages were due and another half of them were being demanded of rent etc so in this scenario we kind of sent it out to the government I don't know what expected add but you kind of immediately come up with some reactive part to it but it revealed to us the last wages that has happened in the name of COVID because there was no reason why people should not have been paid wage for marks I understand the lockdown period whether you want to pay the wage not the wage you don't have working capital for marks people have worked and many of them had not achieved so this has resulted in over time a lot of protest across and the workers have also been protesting against the fact that some of them are not being allowed to go back one due to the lack of transportation two because the contractors do not want them to leave they want to restart the business and they think that by holding them back they will have a large worker place from which to restart and ramp up business and construction activities so this has created a lot of tension about the workers and there have been a number of protests some of the major ones were the students were the major well established contractors like LNW finally those workers have been sent home another case that we came about was LNW, LNW workers are now going back home but LNW is another major contractor workers are quite educated lack of wage payment lack of transportation to go home they have involved like one group that decided to walk they walked the wrong way they were caught by the police put into camps and another group brought up to the streets there was a major protest on the streets of Chennai so for these things have in fact had some effect because more trains are being allowed and most of these workers started to be labour camps are being sent back home wage is limiting the problems especially for small groups large groups are able to fight it out they are able to amplify their voice put it out on social media and some amount of such is possible but small groups like 4-5 people working in hotels working in shops that have now closed down in fact there is an I think company day area property developers are not paid wages it has been a non-standing fight and many of the 100 odd workers are not being paid they have returned and now the labour department is used to think that for them to pay these wages they will have to wait till the show which is over because they don't have money for work to take up these wages so these have been the primary struggles for workers and the government has finally failed them by not being there at all this whole COVID crisis it tells that some kind of critical emergency not as a larger social emergency because of the measures that the government has taken to this when you stop employment you are not having proper guidance you don't want to know how many workers are there some kind of things that we know that it was always a large proportion of workers and yet we were not prepared and this crisis is also a consequence of what the government has not done for a long period of time because activists, labour unions and also researchers have been saying that the registration of migrants are very minimal they are not being registered fully and they need to be brought into the welfare system or some form of registration system so that we know how many are there but the government drags its feet all along and today if you are surprised about these numbers and unable to frame a scheme or a policy or even allocate funds for people, who is to be you drag your feet for 10 years so that has been a major problem and now I think trains are being rashed up because of the pressure that the welfare system has brought up the government and it's hope that the issues of results known that people are able to go back home or reach that work and refuse that's all we have in this episode of Let's Talk we will be back tomorrow with the latest news developments of the day until then keep watching News Click