“The Odisha rally will start on April 15. We will head home, come what may,” says a defiant Anil Dalai despite the Rapid Action Force and enhanced police presence outside their building teeming with migrants.Dalai is among estimated eight lakh Odia migrants working in Surat ’s textile mills, many of who increasingly insistent on wanting to return home. He needs to get back to Kabisuryanagar in Ganjam district where there will be, if nothing else, food to eat, he says.Their cramped living quarters, the uncertainty of the next wage, a lockdown that has their families back home just as stressed, is frustrating. March, the month of Thakurani festivals in Ganjam, is when many of them make their annual trip home.“If we have to die here, we might as well die trying to get back to Odisha to our families. Cops should also realise that a hungry and desperate man will see no reason,” Santosh Das tell ET, a day after migrant labour spilled in an angry protest in the streets of Lasanaka area of Surat. Das, like Dalai, also comes from Ganjam district of Odisha – one of the significant exporters of labour to Gujarat – and Chief Minister Naveen Patnaik’s constituency. “If UP and Delhi could bring their migrants labour back home in buses, is Naveen Patnaik so broke? Why can’t he get us back home?” he asks. He talks of dying because can no longer deal with the angst-filled calls he receives from his wife and two daughters back home in Bhangjanagar.Siba Malik works with the labour organisation Ajeevika which alone has 6500 members registered with them. Depending on the work migrants make between Rs 1.8 -5 per metre of cloth woven or Rs 10-15,000 a month, much of which is remitted back home.“Labour here is not engaged as permanent employee, they don’t even have ID card, if they work at one embroidery unit one day they work another the next. Many don’t have bank accounts or voter IDs, they are not votebanks. The PM’s instruction that salary be paid during the lockdown was easy to waive off,” says Malik unsure of what assurances to offer.A common complaint from both, those stuck in Gujarat and social workers trying to help them, helplines and point persons shared by the Odisha government are unreachable.Nitin Bhanudas Jawale, the Odisha cadre bureaucrat tasked with dealing with Odias in Gujarat, says that’s not true. "I must have taken 500 calls on my personal number, and we are reaching 70,000 ‘very distressed’ migrants in Surat through Whatsapp groups."Many of Odisha’s eight lakh odd migrants have been living in Gujarat since decades. The 70,000 identified by the state live in hostels, men without their families living in crammed multi-storied buildings dependent on large messes to feed them. With their units shut, they no longer sleep in shifts -- rooms are stuffy, anxiety is building up and tempers run high. It has been increasingly for this messes in the industrial areas of outer Surat, to get regular supplies.Relief is being delivered – by the administration, an NGO or an individual – even if it may not be reaching everyone. Waiting for their turn in hour long queues for a ladle of khichdi is not the most morale-boosting outing. “We are working class Odias, can we live on two puris and sabzi. What is the meaning of a lock down and social distancing if we need to walk a kilometre, take a token and queue up for hours,” one of them complains.Other states are unable to understand the cultural aspect and difference of food habits. “We may somehow take care of the food and shelter through intervention but the psychological aspects, the anxiety and agony that they feel is not being addressed,” says Umi Daniel, Director Migration and Education , Aide et Action. “The most important problem is the lack of authentic data on Odisha’s migrants, which has always been a roadblock in addressing the subject. How will a panchayat prepare for a quarantine centre if it doesn’t know how many migrants are going to be returning,” asks Daniel. The Patnaik government has allocated Rs 5 lakhs to each panchayat to prepare isolation centres.Friday’s outburst near Diamond Nagar may not have been triggered by hunger alone. Speaking on condition of anonymity, government sources said many of the migrants had booked buses, paying advances Rs 2000-3000 each, to get back home on April 15 when 21 day national lockdown was to end. The anger was over Odisha announcing a two week extension to the lock down.Surat’s police seems to understand what is happening here. On arresting the rioters - who have since been released on bail - the police fed them first, cops at the station serving them personally. On Saturday, after a visit to the areas, Surat Commissioner of Police, R B Brahmbhatt told ET, “During Diwali mills were shut, and they were all on strike, demanding higher wages. How did they manage then? They are getting regular food, NGOs and the corporation are taking care of that, they just have one mind-set, and are being stubborn about it, they want to go home.” The decision on whether they could get back home during a national lock down, was for the centre, Gujarat and Odisha to make, he added.