While it has affected everyone, the communities who were already economically and socially vulnerable have taken the hardest hit in terms of employment during this pandemic.

Shardaben lives in Sadla, a village close to Patdi in Gujarat. With a family of 7 to support and feed, she and her husband work as bhangar wale – junk collectors. Their everyday routine includes visiting individual households, collecting scrap like plastic and metal, and walking 10kms to sell their gathering of the day to the scrap collector in Patdi, 10kms from their village. This everyday exercise with only a laari for support gets them between Rs. 200-300 a day as earnings. With 5 young children from ages between 5 and 14 years, they were just about managing to get by in their daily lives.

Since the end of March when the lockdown began, they have had zero income.They have received tremendous help from the Rabari community – cattle farmers – from the nearby village, Surajpura, which is 5 kms from Shardaben’s village. The Rabaris would drop off some food for them whenever they came by. On most days, however, Shardaben’s 8 year old daughter goes knocking on the doors of the villagers to beg for food for the family only to be taunted and dismissed. She tries again the next day!

Now, even though the lockdown has slowly started to lift and markets are slowly opening up, Shardaben and her husband are still out of work because their job requires being in close proximity and travel. Also, getting rid of scrap is not exactly the top priority for households at the moment, neither is buying of scrap from the scarp collector.

With no job cards – a mandate for the government’s ‘right-to-work measure -Shardaben is unable to enroll for MGNREGA which has now started in her village. Shardaben says she can only see one way out of her current condition – hoping for things to go back to the old ‘normal’ soon, so their business can pick up and they can live with dignity, again.

Case Study reported by: SWATI Team
Location: Gujarat

 

Lost Livelihoods

The hope of ‘return of the old normal’ like the one Shardaben is holding on to is in many ways wishful thinking. It is now certain that there is no ‘old normal’ and the economy is not going to pick up any time soon. While things are moving at the government front – issuing orders to create new job cards, conversations around re-purposing MGNREGA to include skill building in a big way and the like – the interim is only prolonging the plight of those who were living dignified lives with modest work.