Till yesterday afternoon, Nitish Kumar was so firmly against bringing back those from his state who are stranded elsewhere in the country that he described the proposition as “an injustice to the principle of the lockdown.” His comment, made last week, served as self-defence – he was alone among major states in doing little to bring students and migrant workers back to Bihar. It also did double time as a rebuke to his counterpart in Uttar Pradesh, Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath, who dispatched buses to Rajasthan to help students from his state who were desperate to be home.Today, Nitish Kumar, with characteristic adaptability to popular opinion, is in search of trains to bring migrant workers back to Bihar. His deputy, Sushil Kumar Modi of the BJP, tweeted that the centre must operate special trains to transport “migrants from distant places”. This demand has been made repeatedly by the government of Maharashtra, which has been worst-hit by coronavirus; Mumbai employs more migrant workers than any other city in the country.
