URBAN POOR

In Part I and Part II of our focus on urban jobs and livelihoods, we had examined the need for and feasibility of an Urban Work Guarantee scheme. Citizen Matters also spoke to two eminent economists on the various issues concerning creation of such a scheme. Amit Basole, Director of the Centre for Sustainable Employment at APU (Azim Premji University), has been advocating an urban employment guarantee programme since 2019, and particularly since COVID lockdowns. Dr Jos Chathukulam is lead author of an EPW paper about Kerala’s experiment with its Ayyankali Urban Employment Guarantee Scheme. That such a scheme is…

Mukesh Kumar, a 34-year-old father of three, was a peon in a school till June 2020 when he was laid off. All his efforts to find a job since have been in vain. “There is no place I have not tried,” said Mukesh, a NOIDA resident. “I don’t have the guts to set up a cart to sell vegetables and deal with the local authorities”. Mukesh emphasises that returning to Kanpur, from where he moved to NOIDA over 15 years ago, was not an option even though he may get a few days of work and wages there under MNREGA.…

Vandhaarai Vaazhavaikum Thamizhagam ( Tamil Nadu is a land that provides livelihood to those who arrive here) has been an old adage about the state. A state welcoming migrants from all over the country and the world. Susheel Kumar of Deogarh in Jharkhand may not agree, though. Susheel, one of the many migrant workers in Chennai, has been in the city since 2017. With the fierce onslaught of COVID in the second wave and the resulting lockdown, the Alandur manufacturing unit where he worked shut down. “I am leaving as I have no income here now. I have been doing…

Every Indian city has at least one man-made mountain where ‘waste’ generated in our homes and businesses end up. About 90% of the staggering 150,000 metric ton of urban solid wastes generated everyday make their way to such locations. Called dump yards, landfills or garbage mountains, these toxic sites are the dark underbelly of India’s bustling, glittering cities and are home and workplace for tens of thousands of people. Swacch Bharat Mission-Urban’s 2021-22 budget of INR 1,41,678 crore indicates India’s desire for cleaner cities. The budget encourages garbage free cities but makes no specific provision to improve conditions for disadvantaged communities near landfills.…

At 9:00 in the morning, when commuters jostle to reach Borivali station in suburban north Mumbai and shops start lifting their shutters, it’s time for 24-year-old Lakshman Katappa to begin his work day too. Carrying a black cotton bag on his shoulder, walking barefoot along with his wife Rekha and his younger brother, 13-year-old Elappa, he stops in front of a closed shop. He opens the bag, and out comes a long green ghagra , a head band, a small box containing bandar (yellow oxide powder) and red kumkum , beaded neck ornaments, a small mirror, a chabuk (whip), and…

Gopal Gupta had decided to leave Mumbai for a second time in a year when it seemed certain that lockdown-like restrictions would be introduced again in Maharashtra by mid-April. Instead, at the end of March, his family boarded a train carrying a small red earthen pot with his ashes, to take it back to Kusoura Taluk Sahatwar, their village in Uttar Pradesh. “I don’t think I can only blame corona for my father’s death…Even if he had lived, he would have been without one leg,” says Jyoti, Gopal’s 21-year-old daughter. When Gopal, a 56-year-old vegetable vendor in Kalyan, developed a…

A harrowing tale from last year was my attempt to find shelter for a homeless, mentally ill man, Kumaresan, during the height of the pandemic. My many attempts finally secured a place for him at a shelter run by the NGO, The Banyan. Kumaresan’s story had a fruitful outcome, or so I thought, until recently.  After a few weeks had passed, some of my friends told me that Kumaresan had returned to Perambur and he could be seen on the streets again. As I had not personally come across him, I did not believe them and continued with my routine.…

On the 19th of April, 2021, I brought three poets under one roof - on a Zoom call - to capture their thoughts and expressions on the city, the lockdown, and of course, poetry. Presenting Vishakha Khanolkar, 20,  Nadeem Raj, 33, and Vinita Agrawal, 55; true Bombaywallahs and truer poets who gave poetic expression to lockdowns and the emotional toll it took on the society as a whole. Vishakha Khanolkar is Teach for India fellow. When not entertaining a bunch of 8th Standard teens, she writes short stories and poems. Vinita Agarwal, award-winning poet, editor, and curator has done it…

Afeena, a domestic worker, does not commute by BMTC bus anymore. Ever since COVID's onset, bus services to her workplace has reduced so much that she is forced to either walk nearly 4 km or hire an autorickshaw every day. The recent BMTC staff strike cut off public transport in the city, but even before this, many loyal BMTC commuters had been affected after the corporation reduced its services due to COVID-induced revenue losses. According to the data BMTC shared with this reporter, in March end (before the staff strike), BMTC was running only 5,320 buses out of its fleet…

In India, repair is ubiquitous and it is cheap. There is always a repairer at the street corner or on the footpath or under a tree or even under staircases. Of course, there are repairers with shops or stalls or mobile carts. The informal sector provides earnings for an overwhelming majority of the skilled population but it fails to provide social security. During the lockdown, many of us would have quietly shifted to work from home. But in the informal sector, it was a crisis from the first day as they were being robbed of their basic right to work on the street.…