A walk through the streets of Delhi reveals a diverse, bustling workforce – the vendor that sells fresh flowers outside the temple, the tai...
A walk through the streets of Delhi reveals a diverse, bustling workforce – the vendor that sells fresh flowers outside the temple, the tailor under the tree who darns and repairs old clothes, the woman who makes homemade spices and pickles in the shanty town nearby.
These informal workers feed the economic engine of the city and yet their contributions largely go unrecognised. They remain missing from the imagination of the city, and the absence of their voice in planning and policy has left them constantly excluded and penalised. Now, at the dawn of a new Delhi master plan, in the midst of a global pandemic, workers must have a chance to claim their stake in the city’s future vision.
The pandemic has revealed the depths of workers’ exclusion in the city. They were forced to migrate back to villages, incur massive debts to meet their basic needs and run the risk of exposure to the deadly virus while trying to earn a living. Covid-19 also clearly revealed how the right to decent work is absolutely central for a life in the city.
According to a study by Women in Informal Employment: Globalizing and Organizing on the impact of the Covid-19 crisis on informal workers’ livelihoods, the national lockdown...
