Guddi
From the book An Open Market for Informal Workers: The Precarious Labour Chowks of Delhi
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. Eventually, they found out that the police allow the workers to sleep only in the more public part of the street. This time around, she had come to the labour chowk with her youngest child, husband, brother-in-law, and a cousin. Her husband is more familiar with Delhi. When we met Guddi, her husband had gone to speak to the thekedar.
Guddi’s native place is in Panna district of Madhya Pradesh. Her family owns two bighas of land. They belong to an OBC community and have always been agricultural labourers. She said that in Guddi’s village, the Thakurs and Yadavs own most of the land, while others, including Guddi’s family, work as daily wage agricultural labourers. She mentioned that over the past five years, the drought has gotten much worse. “If we are labourers, we have to migrate,” she said. In her village, most people who go to the city for work are either young men or whole families. Couples and families migrate with their children and the elderly stay back in the village.
Guddi explained that the drought left her village in a state of acute water scarcity. Wells have dried up, and agriculture is no longer viable. The only source of water left is a handpump in the village, and the fields remain unplanted most of the year. The government, she said, has not provided meaningful relief or support.
In Delhi, the biggest challenge Guddi faces is the unpredictability of employment. On some days, she and her husband get hired together, on other days only one of them finds work, and sometimes neither gets hired. “There are days when we do not get work for long stretches. Then we just have to wait and try our luck the next day,” she explained.
Guddi’s family sleeps on the footpath with a few others from their home village—they try to make a little circle to feel safer at night. Work is hard to come by, and the cost of food and survival in Delhi is much higher than in her village. She tries to stretch their earnings to last as long as possible.
When asked if she would go back to her village, Guddi said that until the drought ends and water is available for farming again, she cannot see her family returning. Migration, for Guddi and many others, is not a choice but a necessity born of drought, debt, and the hope of survival in a city.
¹¹ Interview taken in July 2018
Jenny Sulfath 