Millennials Power

In 2018, Upamanyu Raju left home to live in Panna Tiger Reserve deep inside Madhya Pradesh, so that he could pursue his dream of working in conservation and nature. Last year, at the end of April he returned home because of the lockdown. Little did he know that he would be pulled right into the middle of it all.

Upamanyu lives with his parents in Patparganj near Anand Vihar, a locality in East Delhi sandwiched between Delhi and Ghaziabad. It’s a busy intersection because of its proximity to the busy Inter State Bus Terminal (ISBT) where thousands of people gather to be transported to their destinations across the country. As the lockdown was announced, ISBT became a hub where hundreds and thousands of migrant workers thronged in the hope of catching a bus home to their villages in the interiors of the country. But mid-March of 2020, the government restricted transport services—railways, metro and interstate buses—across the country, forcing many to attempt to walk home. So, every morning they would arrive here in droves, congregate and then start their trudge in the scorching heat.

Inside the comfort of his home, Upamanyu witnessed this turn of events as it flashed repeatedly on his television screen. But he only needed to look out the window to see hundreds of them waiting, nervous and exhausted, for buses to ferry them home. Except, there were no buses.

“There was no way we could not have seen or heard what was happening,” he says. “My family and I started going there to distribute drinking water and ration. There we saw people of all ages, distraught, helpless, willing to do anything to get home.”

Upamanyu saw old people starved and barefooted; young children thirsty, wan and hungry; mothers clutching onto their wailing babies. It was simply heartrending. He decided to cross the street every day to give them water, only to discover that many of them had been without food for days. He then started distributing channa, gur and roasted puffed rice. Soon he and his family started cooking for them. His aunt, who lives in Mayur Vihar, would come all the way home just so she could help feed the stranded. “We would give them ORS. They thought it was only for babies. So, we taught them how to use it.”

By May 1, 2020, the government had started the Shramik Special. But the conditions were restrictive – it required passengers to register online. “Everybody was asked to register and none of them had smartphones. We helped them register,” he says. By then he was already in touch with a few individuals who were tweeting and offering help. That’s how he met his partners – Chandrajeet Kumar Gupta, Mohammed Arman Khan, Sonam Chaturvedi and Shouray Roy. They first met on social media, collaborated and formed the Jeevan Stambh Foundation. The team wasted no time and reached out to as many migrant workers as they could. “We were bombarded with requests for online registrations,” Upamanyu says.

Chandrajeet, a UPSC aspirant and a native of Bihar was equally pained to see many from his home state stranded without food and shelter. His role was to coordinate with migrants from all over Delhi and ultimately arrange for their passage home in buses from Lal Qila.

The team strategically delegated work among themselves: distribution of ration; listing of migrants, coordinating with the transport authorities. Each of these functions was handled by different team members. For every bus that departed to its destination, the expenditure would come to about a lakh of rupees that included the cost of hiring, dry ration and water and juice for every passenger; mid-way meals in a dhaba and of course some money to sustain themselves for a few days. “We wanted to ensure they were not hungry. Also, when they reached home, we knew some would have nothing to fall back on so we would give money that would last for at least a few weeks till they were able to find something to sustain themselves,” he says.

The team found drivers, factory workers, and many bonded labourers from brick kilns. The brick kiln workers had been paid a meagre Rs 700 each for their families. They had no shoes and had been walking barefoot on hot, melting tar. So, slippers and ghamchas were bought for them. By then, the team had already established a rapport with the staff at the government-run night shelters. Arrangements were made to shelter many of these labourers there. Between May and June 2020, the team managed to send 6000 migrant workers home and distributed over 5000 packets of food.

All through this, Upamanyu was weighed down with the fear that he would contract the coronavirus and carry the infection back to his home where his 80-plus grandmother and parents lived. But it was they who egged him on to continue with what he was doing. His grandmother would even pack food for him to distribute among the stranded workers. His mother convinced him his time to serve humanity was now. “She told me that I have done enough for animals and it was time that I did something for humanity.” Together, they launched a fundraising drive, urging family and friends to pool in whatever they could.

Upamanyu remembers the sense of helplessness he felt. “It was painful. What we saw last year was plain painful because it was happening to the economically weaker sections of society. Today, what we are witnessing is middle-class suffering. They have Twitter or social media forums at least to ask for help. But these people had nothing.”

But he was also moved by how ordinary people mobilized to extend whatever help they could. “The coming together of civil society marked a different level of humanity. It was because people came together and raised funds that we could do what we did,” he says.

When the second wave hit Delhi between April and May this year (2021), it required a different kind of mobilization. More than food, it was medical intervention that people needed. Initially, the team attended only to SOS or emergency cases where immediate intervention was required. That meant getting oxygen supplies and hospital beds. The team tied up with resident doctors from AIIMS who volunteered to do free consultations on phone and video. The team started a three-tier treatment system: a consultation with a doctor, based on which medication would be provided; if despite the medication the problem persisted, oxygen support would be offered and if that too failed, an ambulance would be organized to take them to hospital.

In the midst of the crisis, Upamanyu remembers, there were also people trying to make a quick buck. Private ambulance services were charging Rs 24,000 for four kilometres and 15,000 for one kilometre. That’s when Jeevan Stambh Foundation stepped in.

“We hired a Maruti van and in it kept an oxygen bed. We ended up getting two in Delhi,” he says.

Now, as the trend is slowly moving toward rural India, the team has shifted focus there. “That’s where the real need is. Delhi has a lot of concentrators and cylinders now,” he says.

Jeevan Stambh Foundation is now shifting base to Palwal. They have set up a 25-bed Covid Care Centre in Hathin, about 65 km from Delhi, ahead of Faridabad. It has 10 beds with BiPAP machines and an ECG machine and has cost them Rs 30 lakh to set up.

What lies ahead after the pandemic? “I would go back to wildlife and conservation because that’s my prime work. But our work has not ended,” says Upamanyu, who is busy setting up a small Covid centre for preventable care for villagers. The target is to have about 100 such centres in Bihar, UP, MP, Himachal, Uttarakhand and Rajasthan. Fortunately, help is pouring in. The idea is to help villagers have access to healthcare facilities given their fear of visiting hospitals.

As he looks back now, he says it was both horrifying and satisfying. “Because as much as we tried to help, we felt helpless so many times. We felt most helpless when people required medicines, basic Covid medicine, and oxygen.”

But it’s been a learning, he says: “It made us more resolute, philosophical.”

And if and when things settle, Upamanyu will head back to the forest, where apart from the animals, he wants to work among villagers to create a system for sustainable living. “I really want people to come out of poverty. I want them to have a means of livelihood and education which will give them long term benefits,” he says. Coming from a 30-year-old millennial, with most of his life still ahead of him, this certainly holds promise.