Asked how the lockdown-induced economic crisis affected the lives-livelihoods of daily wage workers, Rajesh Singh, in his early 20s in Luck...
Asked how the lockdown-induced economic crisis affected the lives-livelihoods of daily wage workers, Rajesh Singh, in his early 20s in Lucknow said, “Since the time of Covid and the lockdown, there has been a severe crisis of employment opportunities in local labor markets. Getting work for even two days in a week is excruciatingly difficult for us. Daily wages too, for any work possible, have dipped by half.”
The tale of Rajesh Singh, struggling to make ends meet for his own family, amidst dwindling prospects for work, reflects the nature and form of the catastrophe that has surfaced since the imposition a year ago of the curfew-style lockdown that sucked out employment opportunities for India’s daily workers in both the unorganised and organised segments.
In a three-month extensive field study undertaken by our research team at the Centre for New Economics Studies, OP Jindal Global University, we documented the stories of over 200 daily wage workers through a randomised survey in mazdoor mandis in Lucknow and Pune. We were aiming to understand the extent to which the economic crisis is affecting the workers’ daily work prospects, how it hurts their incomes, and how little or no state support has forced many to borrow extensively through...
