[This story is co-authored by Aditya Dipankar, a Mumbai-based musician and designer.]
In Chilla Khadar, an urban village close to Mayur Vihar Phase I, live many families who pull cycle rickshaws, work as domestic helpers, clean up the streets and sell vegetables at the mandi. They survive with the help of generators and tube wells. The government, some residents say, has yet to give them electricity and water. Their children attend makeshift schools in the open or under thatched-roof huts because the government school is far away and hard to reach without a pucca road.
Despite their own hardships, many of them got together in support of farmers and labourers from across India who marched in Delhi on November 29th and 30th, demanding a special 21-day session of Parliament to discuss the agrarian crisis. Listen to the voices of the people of Chilla Khadar.
[This article/video was originally published in the People’s Archive of Rural India on November 29, 2018.]