Introduction
The sudden announcement of the nationwide lockdown in March 2020 triggered an unprecedented reverse migration of over 1.14 crore informal workers across India. This humanitarian crisis brought into sharp relief the precarity of the urban informal workforce and exposed profound ethical, structural, and administrative fractures across both state and society.
Ethical Issues in the Migrant Crisis
- Violation of Human Dignity (Article 21): The abrupt suspension of transport without adequate safety nets compelled millions to undertake arduous journeys on foot across hundreds of kilometres, depriving them of basic human necessities and violating their constitutional right to live with dignity.
- Instrumentalisation of Labour: Migrants were largely treated as disposable economic inputs rather than sovereign moral agents. This violated the Kantian categorical imperative to treat human beings always as ends in themselves and never as mere means, as employers frequently withheld wages and landlords resorted to immediate evictions.
- Utilitarian Policy Injustice: Disease containment strategies prioritized safeguarding urban formal populations while disproportionately shifting severe epidemiological, physiological, and economic shocks onto unorganised, marginalized labourers.
- Breach of Administrative Duty of Care: Bureaucratic indifference, arbitrary inter-state and inter-district border blockades, and punitive police enforcement breached the social contract and undermined public trust in the state apparatus.
The Concept of an Ethical Care-Giving State
An ethical care-giving state moves beyond the classical night-watchman role of mere law enforcement to embrace Carol Gilligan's feminist Ethics of Care and John Rawls' Difference Principle, anchoring governance in institutional empathy, relational justice, and responsiveness to structural vulnerability:
- Universal and Portable Social Security: Guaranteeing non-negotiable social safety nets, including portable food entitlements via initiatives like One Nation One Ration Card, statutory wage insurance, and accessible healthcare across state boundaries.
- Constitutional Morality: Proactively executing the Directive Principles of State Policy under Articles 38, 39, and 41 by institutionalising public assistance during unforeseen socio-economic disruptions.
- Anticipatory and Empathetic Governance: Designing disaster management protocols with pre-emptive transition windows, subsidized transit logistics, and adequate relief corridors prior to restricting public movement.
Assistance Rendered by Civil Society
Civil society organizations (CSOs) serve as vital intermediaries capable of agile, compassionate grassroots interventions during humanitarian crises:
- Emergency Relief and Sustenance: Setting up community kitchens, distributing dry rations, operating mobile medical aid stations, and establishing temporary rest and sanitation shelters along major transit corridors.
- Information and Logistical Helplines: Establishing multi-lingual crisis helplines, tracking missing or stranded family members, dispelling misinformation, and coordinating localized transport arrangements.
- Advocacy and Legal Empowerment: Providing legal aid against wage theft, reporting rights violations to administrative authorities, and collaborating with local administrations to bridge welfare delivery gaps.
Conclusion
Disaster governance must recognise that social protection is a fundamental human right rather than discretionary state charity. Institutionalising compassionate governance through frameworks like the e-Shram portal and fostering active collaboration with civil society will ensure future crisis responses preserve constitutional dignity, equity, and resilience.