The Migrant Data

 I wanted to explore a project on tableau. No, that's not where this story begins. Way before I knew what tableau is or even what visualizing what data is, I was reading about the migrant crisis in lockdown. It was heartbreaking because it's pure neglect. In the government's decision making, the whole community of daily wage migrants was overlooked. It seems unreal, because we have 45.36 crore migrants in this nation of ours. Its not a number that could or do disappear when we talk about India or its economy if you have to think that way, but it did. The migrant crisis made headlines with its heartbreaking stories, of mothers dying beside their toddlers, walking workers dying of exhaustion and suicide. The final lethal blow to the entire affair came months later, when the government announced that there is no data of the migrant sufferings and deaths. 

"When there is no accountability, there will also be no responsibility"

That was until I came across the data from Thejash GN, a data enthusiast. He along with some other independent researchers had collected the data from various news sources, and government database. 

I want to visualize this data and this article here is my documentation of the process and the questions I'm going to ask myself. 

Process Documentation

The first step to the whole process that I feel I should follow is to look at it from an academic point of view. To not be emotionally attached to the cause. To view it systematically,

Series of questions.-I

1.What do I want to show?

I don't know yet. 

1.B What do you hope to find?

I want to see relations between deaths and displacement. I want to see where the miscommunication happened. I want to see if there is cause for mass deaths that occurred. 

2.B What do I know?

I know the name, the date of their demise, the location, the cause, the age.

2.B What do you think you don't know but can be found out?

 I can track government orders and information including tweets and so on. I would like to know

2.C Why do you think that is linked?

3.Who is this for?

4.Why is it relevant?

5.Why am I doing this?

Initial Visualization 

I cleaned the data I had with me, connected some loose ends, and what I observed from my initial visualization is as follows:

A. Utter Pradesh records the highest number of deaths from non covid reasons. The number of death goes above 200.

The reasoning assumptions. 

1. Could be because the state produces a large population of migrant workers.

2. Could be because a particular tragedy might have occurred there. Perhaps the train incident occurred there? 

Another finding is that suicide killed more people than exhaustion or starvation and by large margin. Suicidal reasons are mostly defined by financial stress, but also involves reasons like paranoia and harassment. This presents an opportunity for intervention. I wonder if other countries showed similar data as this. 

I can do a comparison of all the suicide cases with the information about their financial background,..I'm not entirely sure where this leads to. But when I went through the data, I found some linkages I'd like to explore on. suicide opens up a conversation about miscommunication and non availability of information.