For whom the budget bells don’t toll

Sushila’s family of five is seated in the verandah of their tiny home, waiting for her to show up with her ‘salary.’ That’s the 5,000 rupees she makes as a domestic helper in two homes. It’s 2 p.m. when Sushila, 45, steps into her house located in the Amara hamlet of Varanasi’s Kashi Vidyapeeth block in Uttar Pradesh.

“Mummy makes 5,000 rupees from cleaning dishes and mopping floors in two houses,” says her 24-year-old son Vinod Kumar Bharati. “She gets it on the first of every month which is today. Papa does wiring, assisting an electrician on the lucky days he finds work. Otherwise there is no source of steady income for us. I work as a labourer. We collectively make 10-12,000 rupees per month. So what does the 12-lakh-rupee tax exemption limit in the budget have to do with us?”

“We used to work under MNREGA (Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act, 2005) till a few years ago. But now they say there’s no work.” Sushila shows us her card which has entries up to 2021, before things switched to digital only. This is Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s Lok Sabha constituency.

Sushila’s husband Satru, 50, adds that in the past two years they got barely 30 days of work under the MNREGA scheme. “When we requested the Pradhan for more,” he says, “we were told to go to the block office and ask for it.”

Sushila shares her house in Amarachak village with the families of two of Satru’s brothers. In all, a joint family of 12 human beings live under this roof.

“I still am waiting for my 35 days’ payment from 2023 when I worked under NREGA,” says Pooja, 42, widow of one of those brothers. “My husband passed away last month, and I have three young sons to look after with no financial help,” she says. “ Shukar hai aaspaas colony me ghar ka kaam mil jata hai [We are blessed that there is a colony where I can get domestic work] ,” she concludes . “Warna sarkar ke bharose to hum do waqt ka khana bhi nahi kha pate [If I had to rely on the state we would not get two square meals a day].”