A call has gone up:

India must learn to be self-sufficient.

It must be a tribute to our sansculottes

That they are first to learn the lesson.

 

Trudging on foot, they are

No longer dependent on transport,

Sparing the moneys that are

Needed for petrol and power

For urgent national causes elsewhere.

 

Subsisting on an occasional biscuit

And thin air, their self-sufficiency

In food leaves heaped granaries

Alone for a market that can pay,

Yielding revenues for the rainy day.

 

Sleeping on highways and rail tracks,

Their gesture precludes the need

For the state to waste resources

On shelter. Just as their resilience

Of body and mind helps spare

Medicines and hospital beds

For citizens whom soft living

Makes first claimants for such care.

 

Dying along the way, the sansculottes

Do not tax the state with burials

And cremations. They demonstrate

The truth of admonitions

Writ in holy books: once the soul

Departs, body has no meaning.

Their fall by the wayside prevents,

Moreover, danger to “social distancing”

From the prospect of unruly keening.

 

Altogether, India’s dour migrant

Workers hold the key

To nationalist self-sufficiency.

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