'Victims' of Hauz Khas Village

This week, the Delhi Pollution Control Committee closed down 20 or so restaurants in Hauz Khas Village. Over the last few years, I’ve seen this quaint village turn into a binge-drinking venue and mess of honking madness, not only every weekend, but during ladies’ nights, flea markets and other events held during the week. However, when Raju, a steward at a restaurant I was dining in, overheard me lauding the decision, he cornered me and offered another point of view.

 

“I got my first job as a waiter in HKV 15 years ago,” he said. “Over the years, it has developed into the one place where English-speaking migrants like me could always depend on for jobs.” New restaurants opened every now and then, while others shut down. “Yet there is always a steadily rising demand for waiters, chefs and kitchen staff there,” he said. In his experience, HKV provided a lot of room for professional growth, since so many job opportunities were concentrated in such a small area. Raju narrated to me his career path to illustrate this.

 

When Raju arrived from Darjeeling, he shared a room with some cousins in a slum near Hauz Khas Village. He started with a job as a dishwasher in a small café. Merely weeks later, when there was a vacancy for a waiter’s position and when his manager realised that he spoke fluent English, he was appointed as their waiter. “Next year, when they didn’t give me leave to go back to my village, I quit that job,” he said. Upon his return, he was easily able to find a job as a waiter in another HKV restaurant. But Raju wanted more. He wanted to be a chef. Didn’t these places require professional qualifications, I asked. “Of course they’d like to hire professionals,” he said. “But most HKV restaurants have a high turnover and attrition rate.” It took one desperate café that had lost its assistant chef just before a big party — and voila, Raju landed the job! There was no going back from there. From momos to dosas, tandoori chicken to burgers, he learnt to cook them all as he went from restaurant to restaurant in HKV. “Eventually, I became a chef in a restaurant outside the Village,” he said. “But to me, HKV is the only place in Delhi that offers multiple employment opportunities to migrants like me.”

 

Consequently, when last week, 22 restaurants and cafes were ordered to shut down, Raju was aghast. “At last count there were about 120 restaurants in the village,” he said. “Even if each establishment employs 10-15 staffers (although many employ more),” he said, “think of the number of people who are facing an uncertain future because of some minor infringements of rules committed by the restaurant owners.” Moreover, he said, it wasn’t as if the norms being flouted in HKV (mostly relating to wastewater treatment and gas emissions) were being followed elsewhere. Did that justify the infringement of rules, I asked.

 

In reply, Raju compared HKV to the slum where he first lived. “It was illegal, but we lived there for years with electricity connections and address proofs — just like these restaurant owners in HKV, who pay through their noses for their taxes and licences,” he said. It became, then, the government’s job to look after the victims of Hauz Khas Village — people like him who depended upon it for employment — just as it looked after the people whose slums they had to relocate. Raju had a point, even though he asked me to change his name in this column to protect his identity. Meanwhile, thinking of HKV as yet another slum has suddenly altered my perspective on it.