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Bhilwara, a textiles and sandstone mining hub, in India’s west was one of the first districts to be locked down following fears of community transmission. Continue reading Bhilwara: In India’s first district to go on lockdown, workers battle hunger and uncertainty
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Women miners in Rajasthan, many from the Dalit and Bhil communities work as a farm labourer for a part of the year, and in the sandstone mines seasonally that are a major source of sandstone exports to Europe and the US. Continue reading Women miners toil over sandstone for export
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An interview with women cadre of the banned Communist Party of India(Maoist) cadre in the forests of eastern India. Babita Mahto, a young woman, who has been with this Local Guerrilla Squad of CPI (Maoist) a year, said that joining the party gave her a sense of purpose and immortality. Continue reading The young rebels of Jhumra hills
The 2012 arson, which killed the company’s human-resources manager and injured many others, eclipsed the stories of the workers’ year-long struggle for a union and better working conditions. In this 2015 reportage for HimalSouthasia quarterly Labour and its Discontents, I traced the lead-up to this unrest – and its aftermath. Continue reading Maruti Strikes
Most responses have been about the Mundka fire as a “disaster”, or how building norms were flouted. But the incident, which has claimed so many women’s lives, lays bare the asymmetries in the working conditions for women. It suggests that, although the thrust of policy has been to get women into the workforce, there is an absence of conversation about the terms they are compelled to accept when they enter the workforce. Continue reading Mundka factory fire: ‘Women workers deserve dignity and rights’
In one of the worst industrial accidents in the national capital, Delhi, 27 workers were confirmed dead, of whom 21 were women workers, and of the 29 who remained missing till May 15 2022, 24 were women.
At the accident site in west Delhi’s Mundka, Naseem Ansari, a 33-year-old migrant worker from Gorakhpur in Uttar Pradesh, continued to search for his wife Asiya, who had taken a job for the first time assembling CCTV cameras at the factory just six months earlier. Continue reading ‘What have they(the powerful) created?’: A migrant factory worker in Mundka
On September 2, 13-year-old Gupi* arrived at the Bokaro station from Delhi by Purshottam Express, accompanied by the police. A few minutes later, the Adivasi girl, who had worked as a domestic worker in Delhi, boarded a bus to Ranchi and then to Gumla, her home district. It is a routine that repeats every month. Since January, 140 children, almost all of whom had worked as domestic workers, returned to Jharkhand. Continue reading A childhood spent in labour
Sanjay, who received a grievous crush injury during industrial work, was looking for a safe alternative livelihood in housekeeping in Gurugram when he and his relative were attacked by local men. Continue reading A Dalit migrant worker survives lynching near Delhi
Haryana authorities have accused Dalit labour organizers Nodeep Kaur and Shiva Kumar of attempt to murder, and extortion. Their colleagues and industrial workers in Kundli contest the police version and say the two labour activists were organizing factory workers to stop wage theft Continue reading Why Govt Ditched Due Process For Labour Organisers Nodeep Kaur & Shiv Kumar
A 22-year-old gangrape survivor from Bihar narrates how she and those helping her ended up in jail instead of the four men who allegedly raped her. Continue reading Araria Rape Survivor Shares Her Story
The government says the new farm laws will give farmers more choice in where and to whom to sell their produce. The protesters fear the laws will push small and marginal farmers into penury. Continue reading Why landless and marginal farmers are the backbone of India’s ongoing farm protests
Being political Continue reading Living collectively
In Kashmir, critically ill patients cannot get timely care, or emergency services. Continue reading In Kashmir, doctors are unreachable, patients anxious
The labour ministry’s focus is on registered construction workers and provident fund subscribers, excluding a vast majority of the working poor. Continue reading Covid-19 relief: When India doesn’t count the poor as workers
In the first month of lockdown to prevent the spread of coronavirus, the Delhi government enhanced food rations and distributed cooked food in night shelters and schools. But it wasn’t nearly enough. Full report here. Continue reading Hunger and deep distress in Delhi in lockdown
On December 8, a fire started at dawn at a factory in Delhi, it engulfed over a hundred workers who slept inside the factory. Forty three workers, including children, asphyxiated to death, while 60 were seriously injured in the most devastating fire in Delhi in a decade. A five-storey residential building housed a factory which government officials said lacked a manufacturing permit as well as fire safety certification. It was, in other words, one of the thousands of illegal factories operating in Delhi. I had visited Anaj Mandi in December and this is how a middle class resident had explained … Continue reading ‘I stitched bags for big brands, but barely earned enough to eat’
A contract worker removed from Honda Motors during a protest demonstration outside the plant on December 6, 2019. Continue reading Day thirty, Honda workers
Since November 5, Honda workers have occupied / de-occupied the factory. National newspapers have reported how it is a helpless situation for Honda which is facing economic stress or recession. Indian Express reported how the company had slowed down, less production, and these workers were contract workers doing irregular/unskilled/ ancillary work, loading or moving trolleys, packing etc. The workers have a different experience / lived experience / perspective on it. Of 2500 contract “casual” workers, 1500 are inside the plant, the rest are at the gate. Most have worked 10-12 years now at the same factory. For over a decade … Continue reading Eleventh night under the sky, in Honda
Forty days after the Indian government stripped the Kashmir region of its relative constitutional autonomy on August 5, 2019, courts are vacant, post offices still shut in Kashmir, making people’s legal fights difficult. Habeas corpus petition are piling up but hearings are being postponed and court orders have dwindled. Continue reading Justice delayed, justice denied
Men and women working late, stitching night dresses, in one of several “fabricator” units in a basement in Delhi Continue reading Working
Jirua Parhaian and Dhaneshwar Parhaiya in Jharkhand’s Manika listened quietly while government officials acknowledged the problems that Parhaiya Adivasis face in availing of government schemes meant for them. Continue reading Particularly vulnerable Adivasi speak of despair, hunger at tech “disruption” of social schemes
Workers say they are unsure if this political system works for them, and no governments are directly able to respond to their issues. At 9 in the morning on Tuesday, instead of starting work at the assembly line, men stood in huddles outside several factories in Delhi’s Okhla industrial area. It was the first day of a two-day general strike called by 10 central trade unions, the largest industrial action planned just months before the Lok Sabha elections. In the last such action in September 2016, trade unions claimed 15 crore workers had taken part, including in industrial areas in … Continue reading A story from Delhi’s industrial areas
Anumeha Yadav 