Rajan Kumar Valmiki and his partner Sanjana have been on the run for the past few years. Their choice to work in the construction sector in Delhi NCR has a backstory of love. Rajan is from the district of Jhansi and Sanjana is from the district of Jalaun, both in UP. When we met them, they were about to share a few chapatis with each other for dinner.
Guddi is a regular at the Sarai Kale Khan labour chowk. Most of the trains from Madhya Pradesh come to the Hazrat Nizamuddin Railway Station, so it was convenient for her to go to the labour chowk nearby to find work. She told us that initially, it was quite difficult for her to navigate this space. She had arrived with her husband and child, and found the labour chowk so crowded that they could not understand what to do. They walked around nearby to find a comfortable place to sleep. They decided on a parking lot near the pay-and-use toilet in the area. When they were half asleep, the police came and drove them away from there.
We met Dhaniram Kushwaha at the Sarai Kale Khan labour chowk. Many of the workers we met there listed chakbandi (land consolidation) as one of the reasons for them having to migrate. To understand the act and the process more deeply, we decided to visit Dhaniram’s village in Lalitpur.
It was under a flyover near the Shahdara labour chowk that we first met Shivam⁶. He was not alone. A couple of rickshaw pullers were taking a nap under the flyover, a middle-aged woman was boiling milk, and some were eating chapatis in a corner. Shivam had a bag full of medical documents which he kept under his head for support.
Jenny Sulfath 