The Prime Minister has said the millions of migrants who have had to return home during the lockdown had “turned adversity into opportunity”. Bhramara Gauda may beg to differ.

When the Surat-bound train chugged out of Berhampur station in Odisha on Sunday, there were tears in Bhramara’s eyes. He was not sure when he would see his family again.

Bhramara, 42, had returned to Odisha from Surat in Gujarat, where he worked in a spinning mill, three months ago when the coronavirus-induced lockdown robbed him of his livelihood.

But his life became more miserable after reaching his village in Odisha’s Ganjam district. There was no work and he had to spend sleepless nights on an empty stomach. All his savings exhausted, he had to borrow from moneylenders, who were breathing down his neck.

The father of two who has a family of six to look after decided to go back.

“For me, it is important to do something to ensure that I get two meals a day,” Bhramara said before embarking on the train journey to Surat on the Puri-Okha Express on Sunday. Although the train starts from Puri, most passengers were from Ganjam district and had boarded the train at Berhampur.

Bhramara said he had to shell out Rs 4,000 for the bus journey home in May. More hardship was in store.

“Nothing worked out for me here. I decided to go back. It’s important to ensure that my two children — a nine-year-old son and a four-year-old daughter — my wife and elderly parents get two meals a day. I could not have stayed back,” Bhramara said.

He said his expertise lay in the textile industry and he used to earn Rs 1,000 a day in Surat at the mill. Back home in Odisha, Bhramara had been largely getting employment under the rural job scheme MGNREGA, which mostly entails digging ponds and laying roads, and also agricultural work, earning not more than a meagre Rs 300 a day. Odisha does not have a thriving textile industry like Gujarat, Bhramara said.

Migrant workers board the train to Gujarat Gopal Krishna Reddy

He said he was desperate to go back as he had exhausted the Rs 25,000 he had brought home from Surat. “I had to take a loan of Rs 60,000 at a very high rate of interest. Moneylenders were pestering me. So I decided to go back,” Bhramara said.

He no longer fears the coronavirus. “I have realised that I will have to live with this corona and work.”

Saying goodbye was heart-breaking. “ My two kids were crying. They didn’t want me to go back. I don’t know when I will be able to see them again. My wife was silent,” Bhramara said.

Similar is the story of 32-year-old Lochan Biswal from Ganjam. “Had I got work here, I would not have returned to Gujarat. Who wants to leave his native place?” said Lochan, another spinning mill worker in the same train to Gujarat.

“Although I had managed to get some work back home, the earnings were meagre. Also, the work did not match my skills,” Lochan said, adding that he was not sure when he would be able to return home again.

He said it was difficult to maintain physical distancing in the packed train.

“As several buses have met with accidents, I decided to go by train. This, too, is risky but then I am taking a risk by going back to Surat anyway,” Lochan said.

Surat, Ahmedabad and other cities of Gujarat employ lakhs of Odia labourers. Nearly 10 lakh people from Odisha, a majority of them from Ganjam, work in the textile mills of Surat alone.

On Sunday, the train left for Surat with more than 1,000 migrant labourers.

On Saturday evening, another train had left for Ahmedabad. Such was the rush that the passengers had to reach the station five hours before the scheduled departure of the trains.

The special trains are being run on the request of Union minister Dharmendra Pradhan, who hails from Odisha. He had urged railway minister Piyush Goyal to make arrangements for the return of migrant labourers to their workplaces in Gujarat, Karnataka and Maharashtra.

Trains will leave for Gujarat again on September 15, 17, 18, 19 and 22. All seats have been booked. Workers who had returned to Odisha on boats and other modes of transport from places such as Chennai are beginning to make the long journey back. None of them appeared to have created a “record”, as the Prime Minister had said on Saturday while speaking of migrants.