Labouring Lives: Hunger, Precarity and Despair amid Lockdown

Over 92 per cent of the survey’s respondents – or 1,294 workers – were unable to find work during the lockdown, while 5 per cent of respondents (70 workers) found work with a lesser pay than before, and 2.6 per cent (37 workers) found work at their regular rate.

The report notes that daily wage workers, inter-state migrants and workers in urban areas earned more than some other categories of workers before the lockdown began. But their employment was highly fragile, they remained extremely vulnerable to job loss, and could barely withstand the lockdown shock.

More than 60 per cent of respondents reported they remained hungry for days – ranging from 1 to more than 7 days – during the lockdown period.

Roughly a fourth of all respondents did not have to access to food support provided by the government during the lockdown. The survey’s results indicate that non-governmental organisations “were a bigger source of food support compared to the government.”

Over half of the surveyed workers had to borrow money during the lockdown: 39.9 per cent (or 560 workers) borrowed from friends and relatives; 7.1 per cent (or 100 workers) from money lenders’ and 6.3 per cent (or 88 workers) from local shops.

Among the survey’s respondents, a disproportionate share of Muslims, ‘non-migrants’, women and workers earning less than Rs. 5,000 a month, did not receive income or food support from any source – NGOs, the government, community members, religious charities or relatives.

The report recommends an ‘expansion’ of the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act, 2005, such that work is provided “on demand” to all adults, without restrictions, and for more than 100 days. It also suggests implementing an employment guarantee scheme for urban areas.

The public distribution system should be universalised, states the report, and the government must implement cash transfers at a large scale to tackle this “immense humanitarian crisis.”

Focus and Factoids by Arpita Giri.

PARI Library's health archive project is part of an initiative supported by the Azim Premji University to develop a free-access repository of health-related reports relevant to rural India.