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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