BHUBANESWAR: On Tuesday, 75 buses carrying around 2,000 Chhattisgarh students, who were stuck in Kota, Rajasthan, reached Raipur. A day before, 391 Assamese students reached Guwahati in 17 buses sent to the same town to evacuate them by their Government. Last week, Madhya Pradesh had got back 3,000 of its children from the major coaching hub of the country by sending 150 buses. Uttar Pradesh has been bringing back its students stuck outside in batches.
Even Maharashtra, the worst-affected state in the Covid-19 outbreak, is ready to send 100 buses to evacuate nearly 2,000 students stranded there. Why has Odisha Government forsaken its own children while displaying amazing alacrity to bring migrant workers back from other states? As many as 228 Odia migrant workers have already boarded buses from Surat, only a day after Chief Minister Naveen Patnaik held a discussion on the issue of facilitating their return with his Gujarat counterpart Vijay Rupani.
Yet, the Government has been completely blind to the suffering and trauma of the young students, despite desperate SOS’ sent by them from Kota, Mumbai and other educational hubs in the country. Even, the pleadings by concerned parents and guardians have fallen on deaf ears. While the Government has no information on the number of students pursuing studies in other states, there has been no effort to undertake such an exercise to identify them in view of Covid lockdown and take measures for their well-being at the least. For the last one month, parents of some students from Rourkela, who are stuck at Kota, are knocking doors at every level but no action has been taken.
According to estimates, there are more than 120 students from Rourkela stranded in Kota while the total number from across the State in the hub would be over 1,500. Tens of thousands of Odia students are spread across the country, particularly in the cities like Delhi, Mumbai, Bangalore, Hyderabad, Chennai, etc. for coaching and higher studies. While many have been able to return before the lockdown, a substantial chunk are still stuck and left to fend for themselves. Jogendra Mahato of Jagda, Rourkela, and his family have been spending sleepless nights since March 24, when the lockdown was announced, in constant worry about his daughter Diptirekha.
The 19-year-old is taking medical coaching in Kota and staying at a private hostel. Hostel inmates from UP and MP have already returned home with their governments’ help while she and 12 others from Odisha are left on their own. “There is no problem with food, but the children have been seriously affected psychologically as their fellow students from other states have been evacuated and they are left alone. They are in a state of panic. We are spending all our time in encouraging them to be strong and reassuring them that they will be able to return at the earliest,” Mahato said.
we need to be rescued too, say stranded students
Similarly, more than 70 students from Odisha pursuing BEd at KJ Somaiya Sanskrit Vidyapeetham in Mumbai have been pleading the State Government since March 25 to rescue them. “We have been sending requests to Odisha Government for more than a month. We have also registered ourselves in the Covid-19 portal. However, we are yet to get any communication from the State,” said Ajay Pati, one of the stranded students.
Psychologist and chief therapeutic counsellor at Manam Foundation, Somya Sucharita Mohapatra said, more than the workers and adults stranded outside, it is a dire necessity to reach out to the students as the youngsters are more vulnerable to psychological trauma arising out of catastrophic situations. The workers are accustomed to staying away from families for long duration as also facing hardship. The students, on the other hand, are away from the comfort of their homes due to compulsion. The impact of such extreme situation like lockdown is more severe on them. It takes a heavy toll on their physical and mental health, she said.
“A student stuck outside Odisha is finding herself completely isolated and lonely. She has psychosomatic complaints of breathlessness, migraine, stomach ache, nausea and is talking about ending her life as she feels talking on the phone with family is not sufficient,” Somya stated, and warned about the serious consequences of isolation on young ones. Meanwhile, even as Congress legislature party leader Narsingh Mishra urged Chief Minister Naveen Patnaik to take immediate steps to rescue students from Kota, there is a sense that the neglect of the youngsters is political. The huge migrant worker population is a vote-base and, thus, so emphatically attended to. The students, on the other hand, are miniscule and too scattered to be noted.