scorecardresearch
Monday, March 25, 2024
Support Our Journalism
HomeOpinionBy sealing Delhi NCR borders, Covid has ended fluidity between where labourers...

By sealing Delhi NCR borders, Covid has ended fluidity between where labourers live and work

The very labourers who have held on for over two months of lockdown and not left, are now abandoning Delhi NCR in droves.

Follow Us :
Text Size:

The gradual opening of the economy after the coronavirus pandemic-induced lockdown has highlighted major flaws in the metropolitan governance of the Delhi National Capital Region, which has grown increasingly distant from the fluidity of its urban form and labour mobility.

The metropolitan region comprises multiple district and state jurisdictions, split across 24 districts in Delhi, Haryana, Rajasthan, and Uttar Pradesh. The millions who live and work across the district and state borders in the NCR include not only service sector commuters, who have the privilege of being able to work from home during lockdown, but also millions of workers who commute by cycle and on foot. Migrants living in border settlements like Kapashera often work just across the border in Gurugram’s Udyog Vihar, for example. Similar conditions can be found all over Delhi, at borders with Faridabad, Noida, Ghaziabad, and Sonipat. Furthermore, these conditions also exist elsewhere in the metropolitan region, for example, in Dharuhera and Bhiwadi that are split between Haryana and Rajasthan. These borders have been almost invisible so far with millions working and moving across them daily. The coronavirus crisis has brought them to the fore as a key problem in the metropolitan governance of the region.

The uncanny re-emergence of borders within the metropolitan region of Delhi NCR has highlighted how ground realities have not been reconciled with realities of metropolitan governance. This has adversely impacted lives and livelihoods of those workers who rely on daily mobility across invisible borders and on whose labour the metropolitan economies have built themselves.


Also read: Noida’s migrant worker exodus is more about their notions of ‘home’ than coronavirus: Study


Trapped at the borders

Migrant workers, who trusted the government of India’s assurances and opted not to leave the city, have been let down. In the early phases of the lockdown, the government response to returning migrants was the hardening of borders, seeking to freeze mobility. The language of the Ministry of Home Affairs further orders in this regard suggested that the retention of labour was important to reinstating economic activity. And indeed, a large number of workers did see sense in staying put, thinking they would quickly start earning when the lockdown ended. Many who had lived in the city for years were not entirely sure of their welcome back home, where they would return sans savings. Women, reluctant to give up their relative autonomy in the city, favoured staying on.

However, the horrific experiences of the workers choosing to leave the city have been mirrored only by the hardships of those who stayed back. They have been making constant emphatic calls to their employers and contractors with the hope that the factories would reopen or that restrictions on the entry of domestic workers into residential complexes would ease. But the lockdown has dragged on instead, with not a ray of hope in sight.

While the role of district-level administration has been key in the Covid-19 response, it is evident that district borders do not hold sway over the spatial organisation of work and home. In fact, in a tightly knit and interconnected region like the NCR, practices and institutions that reinforce borders have drawn the ire of inconvenienced residents, who have sought to erase them if they get in the way of mobility and livelihood. Think about the long protests that got the toll abolished on the Delhi-Gurugram border along NH-8 for private vehicles because of long waiting times for commuters. The hardening of these borders owing to the lockdown is a serious impediment to the revival of livelihoods in many parts of the NCR.


Also read: ‘Better to die with families’ — no food or money, Delhi migrants prefer the long walk home


Barriers to work

In Delhi’s Kapashera village, workers are unable to cross the border to work in the garment factories in Gurugram’s Udyog Vihar, only a few kilometres away. “We don’t know when we can start work again. We have been living in Kapashera and working in Udyog Vihar for over 10 years now. Even if the factories in Udyog Vihar have reopened, we are not allowed to cross the border to go there. It has been almost two months without work. The landlords are pressing us for rents, but we have no livelihood. This is what is driving many from Kapashera to walk back to their villages; we are also thinking of doing the same,” says Bibha, a resident who hails from Bihar.

This situation is infinitely worsened by the bordering processes adopted under the current paradigm of disease management. Civil society organisations offering food relief in Gurugram are reporting a spike in calls from working-class clusters such as Sarhol, which are inside containment zones. Cordoned off from the outside world, residents in these areas are prohibited from moving out to work, nor can civil society deliver relief supplies to them. The failure of the administration to target supplies to these vulnerable hotspots has already been highlighted, and no relief appears to be in sight. With the number of containment zones in the city up to 45 – and growing – the number of people impacted will only increase.


Also read: Job loss, rent and exodus — Covid-19 crisis tells us migrants need housing security


Rethinking metro governance

For millions Bibha who live and work across the invisible borders of Delhi’s extended metropolitan region, these impediments to regaining livelihoods are the last straw in a series of disasters that have befallen them since the pandemic broke out. So, it is no wonder that ironically, just as employment opportunities are coming back, the very migrants who have held on for over two months, are abandoning the city in droves. “About 60 per cent of the tenements in the village is empty and buses are showing up every day to take more people to their villages in West Bengal and elsewhere,” a landlord in Tikri village located in Gurugram’s Sector 48 told us. As interstate borders open up and regular transport resumes, the exodus is likely to grow even further.

The crisis then offers an opportunity to rethink metropolitan governance, in a way that recognises and leverages the interconnectedness and interdependencies of communities that inhabit economically vibrant regions like the NCR.  A suggested avenue could be tasking the NCR Planning Board, an inter-state institution created expressly for regional planning, with identifying and facilitating the smooth functioning of vital mobility corridors. An intervention from district labour departments to ensure workers have identification ensuring unhindered movement would also greatly help. Small, timely steps along these lines can greatly aid the NCR’s rapid economic revival.

Mukta Naik is a Fellow at the Centre for Policy Research, New Delhi. Nitin Bathla is an architect and doctoral researcher with Centre for Research on Architecture, Society and the Built Environment. Views are personal.

Subscribe to our channels on YouTube, Telegram & WhatsApp

Support Our Journalism

India needs fair, non-hyphenated and questioning journalism, packed with on-ground reporting. ThePrint – with exceptional reporters, columnists and editors – is doing just that.

Sustaining this needs support from wonderful readers like you.

Whether you live in India or overseas, you can take a paid subscription by clicking here.

Support Our Journalism

2 COMMENTS

  1. From the long and often bombastic and convoluted language, one can conclude a single problem. Workers live across the Delhi border, while they go to work within it. Before the lockdown there was no problem, but with the strict lockdown in place, these people cannot cross the border to work. The sealing of borders by the neighbouring state, is to prevent ‘corona carriers’ from spreading the infection in their states. Something must be done to assure the neighboring states that this particular problem is being tackled seriously. In absence of this the situation on the ground will remain the same. Hope this précis will convey clearly what the authors ment.

  2. Thing is that every citizen is now taged with aadhaar number and so their livelihood activity can well be monitored who are the key person crossing the borders extra hence when policy decisions are taken where in the restrictions involving movement across the border is imposed it should be kept in mind how to deal with scenario for these people that is how the advancement and society can be achieved

LEAVE A REPLY

Please enter your comment!
Please enter your name here

Most Popular