Geetanjali Krishna: Waiting for work at Labour Chowk

These days, I find myself in Delhi's famous hardware market Kotla Mubarakpur almost every day looking for household renovation supplies. Every day, whether I'm buying paint or tiles or plumbing equipment, I see hordes of hopefuls hanging around, wondering if my purchases are going to mean business for them. For in the Labour Chowk, skilled and unskilled workers of all sorts wait, as someone has picturesquely described, "like mannequins in a shop window" - waiting for work to find them.

One day, as I was getting cans of paint loaded into the car, a young man approached me. "Do you need a painter?" he asked. I didn't. He said hopefully, "Then does your painter need a helper?" I again replied in the negative. "I also do masonry work and hard labour, of course. If you need any job done, please let me do them." I said I had employed a contractor. So, he asked me if I could introduce him to my contractor. "I dream of working with a good contractor. That's the only way to be assured of regular work," he said. Impressed by his tenacity, I said I'd check if my contractor actually did need some labour. He unbuttoned his shirt and I saw he had a secret pocket sewn into his vest. "My wife sewed these pockets on all my vests after my money and phone got picked out of my pocket when I'd just arrived in Delhi," he explained, showing me a tattered copy of his voter card. Then he took out a notebook and wrote his name. "I'm Munna," he said. "Whenever you need any work done, ask for me. They all know me here." He had recently migrated from Budaun, Uttar Pradesh, and was desperate for work. Sometimes, he said, he was able to find work - or work was able to find him - only for 15 days in a month. "There are too many workers and not enough work, you see."

A few days later, I was in Kotla again when I saw Munna again. He had just got a gig as a beldaar (a construction site labourer) at Rs 300 a day. "Yesterday, the supervisor said I was slow, so he arbitrarily deducted Rs 50. I didn't demur, for its important to stay in his good books." But this was a mere bagatelle, Munna said. The week before, he had got a job lifting 200 sacks of cement at a construction site. "The contractor said he'd pay me Rs 350, but gave me only Rs 200. What could I do but take the money, smile and leave?" he said. "I've to pay my rent." He lived, he said, in a room with six other men, all of whom tried their luck at Labour Chowk every day.

Another couple of days later, when I had to make a quick stop in Kotla, I saw him again, lolling near Labour Chowk. "Today, I wasn't feeling well, so I took half a day's job lifting cartons at a shop," said Munna. "I'm hoping I get an easy job tomorrow as well." He couldn't afford to rest, for he subsisted on his daily wage. "Moreover, right now I'm not too ill, so I can work. I feel afraid of what would happen if I were to get sicker..." he said sombrely.

Munna recovered soon enough, for he was around when I went next to Kotla. I wondered, however, what he would have done if he'd become sicker? The utter lack of a security net for him and others in India's vast unorganised sector made it a scary prospect. As he said, when I asked about his health, "while our limbs are working and there are jobs to be got in Labour Chowk, life is okay. If not, then okay ta-ta bye bye."