advertisement
Cameraperson: Athar Rather
Video Editor: Prashant Chauhan
It was 7am. The crowd at Noida’s Labour Chowk was surging. Most of them without a mask, a must during the COVID-19 pandemic.
Six months ago, 23-year-old Amit Kumar had come to Noida from Rajasthan’s Bharatpur to take an exam, when PM Narendra Modi announced a lockdown to curb the spread of coronavirus.
“I was stuck here, so I rented a room but did not have any money to pay the rent. Now, I join the queue at Labour Chowk every morning, hoping to find some work to repay my debts to my landlord,” he said.
“I wait for 7-8 hours everyday, but mostly have to return home empty-handed,” Kumar added.
Unfortunately, Kumar is not the only one crushed under unemployment and debt. The crowd swells with every passing hour at this labour hub and so do the stories of despair.
Santosh is among the 10.4 million migrant workers who, according to the Modi government’s own data, left the city after the lockdown. He returned from his village in Uttar Pradesh’s Sitapur after six months.
The government, in a reply to Parliament, said they have maintained “no data” on the loss of livelihoods of migrant workers. But, in April, CMIE (Centre for Monitoring Indian Economy) had pegged job loss of daily wage earners at 91 million.
Ansari Khatoon, 32, is the sole earning member of her family. Before lockdown, she was employed at a small private firm which would pay her Rs 8,000-9,000 every month. "With that money, I could manage both food for my kids and the house rent,” she said.
How much does she earn after lockdown? “If I find work on one day of the week, I am sitting idle waiting for the rest of the week. How will I feed my family like this? I have 7 months worth rent pending,” Khatoon said.
There are many other women who gather at Labour Chowk, some of them with their kids, hoping to find a day’s work.
62-year-old Kamal Singh, a native of Madhya Pradesh’s Hussainabad, has been coming to find work at Noida’s Labour Chowk for the last 30 years. “I have never seen such a sorry state at Labour Chowk.”
According to CMIE’s August report, while unorganised sector is swiftly making a comeback, salaried jobs are still severely affected. Unemployment rate grew to 8.35 percent in August – first jump after subsequently declining since May.
The informal labour force has been effectively rendered jobless and for many, their survival is based on the government's flagship jobs scheme, MGNREGA, under which every household is entitled to at least 100 days of unskilled manual labour at a rate of Rs 200 per day.
(At The Quint, we question everything. Play an active role in shaping our journalism by becoming a member today.)