When Shantaram Prajapati’s brother took a Shramik Special train from Mumbai to Gorakhpur last month, it was a practical decision for the fa...
When Shantaram Prajapati’s brother took a Shramik Special train from Mumbai to Gorakhpur last month, it was a practical decision for the family. One brother would go home to their aging parents, and the other would stay back to run their retail vegetable shop in an upper-middle class area in Andheri.
On most days, however, Prajapati wonders whether he should have left the city too.
“Koi mazdoor nahi hai – there are no labourers,” he said, as weighed green beans for a customer. “Business has dropped by fifty percent anyway.”
Prajapati was referring to the state of wholesale agricultural markets in and around Mumbai, where hundreds of truck drivers and mathadi workers – those who load and unload heavy goods – are conspicuous by their absence. With more than half of them gone, both wholesale and retail vendors have been forced to scale down their sales.
Like millions of other migrant workers across urban India, these labourers fled cities and made difficult journeys back to their villages after losing work, income and food security in the aftermath of the Covid-19 lockdown. The lockdown was announced at just four hours’ notice on the night of March 24.
Even though vegetables and fruits are essential goods, their supply was considerably hit by...
