Invisible People and Architectures of Delhi: Stories of-Shifting Workforce

- 105 - Walking down the street in the urban village of Kilokri of Delhi most days of the year, gives me a wonderful sense of the seasons. The area is full of street vendors of different kinds. Carts loaded with seasonal foods, both cooked and uncooked. Vendors walking around with triangular bamboo stands with more food. Cycle vendors who call out with their characteristic calls and offer to sharpen knives and scissors, or sell all kinds of cleaning equipment like brooms etc. The flute seller who leaves beautiful melodies floating effortlessly behind him, as he walks by. And vendors who sit by the side of the street with their wares on little plastic squares. There are vendors who are there every day with different articles for sale, depending on the time of the year. And then there are those who are from far away areas, and visit occa- INVISIBLE PEOPLE AND ARCHITECTURES OF DELHI: STORIES OF A SHIFTING WORKFORCE Meeta Mastani Textile artist, Bindaas Unlimited https://dx.doi.org/10.12795/astragalo.2020.i27.08 sionally. All these micro entrepreneurs create the structures of theirmobile stores and their lives themselves, and carry them around, setting up and dismantling their stores every day. With a recorded history from the 12th century onwards, Delhi is one of the oldest inhabited cities with a population of 20 million people. A city with a population explosion of 47% between 1991-2001 and of 21% between 2001-2011.1 Surrounded by other growing towns like Noida, Gurgaon, Faridabad and Ghaziabad, all of which along with Delhi form the National Capital Region [NCR], its population 1 See Census of India 2011, which can be checked online at https://censusindia.gov.in/2011-prov-results/data_files/ delhi/3_PDFC-Paper-1-tables_60_81.pdf, accessed on October 30th 2020. ASTRAGALO, 27 (2020) Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike - CC BY-NC-SA ARTICLES, ISSN 2469-0503 INVISIBLE PEOPLE AND ARCHITECTURES OF DELHI: STORIES OF A SHIFTING WORKFORCE - 106 - Meeta Mastani - 107 - density is almost double than those of Tokyo or New York city, and crime rate is less than half of New York City.2 With families that can trace their lineage in the city to well over a hundred years, it is a city with stability and growth. It is also an invisibly shifting city. Much of its working class population comes from outside the city and nonchalantly hops in and out of the city on crowded buses, trains, jeeps, trucks and informal ride shares on the highways leading out of the city. Visible, settled Delhi often does not notice or acknowledge this structure of Delhi that provides many of its essential services. As the largest commercial centre in North India, Delhi’s GDP estimates were $96 billion in 2017-2018.3 The reasonably priced services and products made in the city are in a large part due to these migrant workers. Most ofthem earn less than the minimum working wage declared by the Delhi Government, which is USD 202.00 per month for semi-skilled labour.4 In 2001, Delhi received 1.7 million net 2 These statistics were compiled in preparation for the 13th Urban Age conference by LSE Cities, a research centre at the London School of Economics and Political Science, and Deutsche Bank’s Alfred Herrhausen Society, held in Delhi on 14-15th November 2014. See the editorial in Mint, published 14th November 2014, https://www.livemint. com/Politics/Zt73mwOmPPbVmlNloecuBP/Delhi-more- densely-populated-than-New-York-Tokyo-study.html, accessed online on 30th October 2020. 3 See Highlights of Economic Survey of Delhi 2017- 2018, made available online by the Delhi government at http://web.delhi.gov.in/wps/wcm/connect/ebac160044d- 712cf8532873726e205c9/HighEng.pdf?MOD=AJPERES& lmod=1042919677&CACHEID=ebac160044d712cf85328 73726e205c9, accessed on October 20th 2020. 4 See the data regarding current minimun wage rate published online by the Labour Commissioner, Government of NCT of Delhi, at https://labour.delhi.gov.in/content/current-minimum-wage-rate, accessed on October 20th 2020. migrants [accounting for inflow and outflow of migrants] which was 16.4% of its total population at the time.5 Mobile vegetable and food vendors, tailors, plumbers, masons, construction workers, cycle rickshaw drivers, newspaper vendors, domestic workers, gardeners, garbage collectors, recyclers, car cleaners, delivery people, small entrepreneurs and rideshare drivers are some of the people who contribute to this shifting architecture of the city. Except for domestic workers, it is a very gendered world, constituted mostly by men. People who come from places near the city, go back home as frequently as once a week. Others come and go every harvest season to work on their family land. Others still come and go about 4-5 times a year. There are people who have been living in the city for years and whose families are here with them. They go back for community weddings, government benefit schemes and to vote in elections. Many people live and work in Delhi only part of each year and go back to their villages to farm their lands during the rest of the year. Like their presence in the city, their homes are also somewhat temporary and shifting. Most of them live in one of the many urban villages of the city, or in ‘unauthorised colonies’, in which a large percentage of the population of the city lives. These coloniesstart by people taking over tiny pieces of land and making temporary shelters for themselves. They expand and contract by greasing the palms of 5 See the article on migration made available online by the Office of the Registrar General and Census Commissioner, Ministry of Home Affairs, Government of India: https:// censusindia.gov.in/Ad_Campaign/drop_in_articles/08- Migration.pdf, accessed on October 30th 2020. INVISIBLE PEOPLE AND ARCHITECTURES OF DELHI: STORIES OF A SHIFTING WORKFORCE - 108 - the police and other officials in the area. It’s a constant battle to protect these homes, which start out as temporary structures with plastic sheets as roofs and gradually become tiny concrete structures. Yamuna Pushta is an area which had hundreds of thousands of people living by the banks of our forgotten once mighty river, the Yamuna. These people took over land by the side of the river and farmed, or just lived there. They would move to higher grounds with tents when the river flooded during the monsoons and moved back down to the river when it came back to its earlier level. About 4,00,000 people from here were relocated to the borders of the city by the government between 2004 and 2009 (Menon-Sen and Bhan 2008) Construction workers often make basic bamboo frame structures with plastic sheets as covers. Or use the bricks which are on site for construction and pile them into temporary structures on the site itself. Once the construction nears the end, they dismantle their own homesand use the bricks for making the houses they are constructing as a team. There were about 3,00,000 street vendors in Delhi in 2011, all without registration (Bhowmik and Saha 2012: 38). We had about 6,00,000 rickshaws employing a million people in 2013. Only 99,000 of them were officially licensed.6 In 2010 about 7% of the Indian workforce was organized. 93% belonged to the unorganized sector and accounted for 50% of India’s GDP (Salve 2013). The situation has not changed dramatically since then. Most of this sector, includingself-employed individual workers and small enterprises, struggle to work with little to no State support or benefits. In sector after sector, the story is the same. We have little to no formal registrations by the city, and no social security net for the people in all these sectors. They provide inexpensive services and everyone including the State pretends as if they don’t exist. They are at the mercy of the police, and their employers with no mechanism for redressal. Since there is 6 See the info provided Intercultural Resources and Human Resources Development Foundation (PT 2013). Meeta Mastani - 109 - INVISIBLE PEOPLE AND ARCHITECTURES OF DELHI: STORIES OF A SHIFTING WORKFORCE - 110 - no registration, they often have to pay bribes to officials who patrol the streets. With very small earnings, and no formal acknowledgement of their existence, they live vulnerable lives that are perpetually on the edge. Documented below are the outlines of the lives of some of these invisible people, based on interviews with them. ASHRAFI LAL Asharfi Lal Ji lives in near the Agra Firozabad border about 235 km from Delhi. He has worked in Delhi for about 25 years and came here at the age of 19. He is a tailor who worked for others earlier, and now runs his own workshop with seven to eight tailors where he works against contracted orders. He goes home every other weekend to meet his 5 children and wife. He would like to bring his children to Delhi, but he is unable to afford the rent for any sort of room in the city. He and most of his workers stay in his rented tailoring workshop for which he pays 125 USD a month. In a room of 315 square feet, with their sewing machines, a room to keep the fabric they are sewing and other equipment, there is not much space for them to sleep. His unit is in Tuglaqabad extension area, which is an unauthorized neighborhood. He is fortunate enough to have a toilet which is reserved for his rented space, unlike many others who live and work there. They cook inside the workshop in a small room that is also their office. His smartphone helps him get many of his orders and saves him several trips to his customers, as he can send them photos of his work. His workshop is near Okhla Industrial area, which is one of the few official industrial areas in the city, and where a lot of his customers are situated. Getting back to work after the lockdown has been very hard for him and orders are less than 50% of what they were earlier. Living in his workshop helps him save on some time and effort to commute. He travels in the city using buses, the metro and his trusted old cycle. Meeta Mastani - 111 - INVISIBLE PEOPLE AND ARCHITECTURES OF DELHI: STORIES OF A SHIFTING WORKFORCE - 112 - He likes being in the village with his family, but has no source of income there. He has also been a social worker in the village, helping people file “First Information Reports’ with the police. It is not easy to file such documents, specially for underprivileged people, as once filed, the police are legally obliged to follow up on this report. Given that he stands his ground socially and does not back off, he has been in serious trouble. In this regard, part of his being in Delhi is also for his own safety. Coming from a Scheduled caste, he is expected to know his place, and being political and feisty as he is does not help. The anonymity of the city helps people reduce the importance of their caste, even if it can’t be completely erased. He enjoys the anonymity of Delhi and the camaraderie with his co-workers. The biggest problem of running his own enterprise, as with most Indian enterprises of every size, is that his customers may not pay him. With an overburdened judiciary, there is no way to ensure redressal for small legal problems like this. NOOR MOHAMMAD Noor Mohammad Ji’s village is in District Chapra in Bihar which is about a thousand kilometres from Delhi. It is telling that despite living in Delhi since 1999, he still refers to his village as home. He goes back home at least twice a year. If he is unwell, he goes back additionally for treatment. He drives a cycle rickshaw in which he transports materials and finished products, between production units and factories in Okhla industrial area. After working in Delhi for a few years, he brought his family here, but had to take them back to the village since they could not afford to live here. The rents and food prices were too high for them. Another very important factor was the fact that they are Muslims and he felt insecure leaving them at home in Delhi during the day while he went to work. Over the years, attacks against Muslims, specially underprivileged Muslims, have increased Meeta Mastani - 113 -