Azadpur Mandi, Delhi
Delhi’s Azadpur Mandi is the city’s largest vegetable and fruit market. Hundreds of tonnes of fruits and vegetables change hands in the market, before they go on to be retailed to citizens of India’s capital city. Helping move this fresh produce in the vast mandi are about 40,000 palledars (porters) who load and unload produce from trucks.
Before the pandemic, these palledars, mostly drawn from rural India or small towns, worked hard, earned decent money and sent back most of it home. The second wave of COVID19 has left them in the lurch — even after relaxation of the lockdown, they have no work, have no money to cook with, and none whatsoever to send back to waiting families.
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Fifty five-year-old palledar Siyaram Yadav is from Moojauna hamlet in Bihar’s Khagaria district. He has not found work in a fortnight now, and has been exhausting his meagre savings. He is very anxious about his family back home, and how they are coping without money.
“Either I survive or my family does”
“I have been sitting idle for the last two weeks. I am not able to send back any money home. I live, cook and eat in the market,” Siyaram Yadav told Gaon Connection. “We get paid based on the number of sacks we carry on our backs. I am now surviving by tapping into the money I had set aside for my family. My choice is between saving my own life or that of my family,” he rued.
Anil Singh is 46 years old, but looks frail. But, that does not stop the resident of Dalan Haripur village in Bihar’s Khagaria district from carrying heavy bags of potato. He works every day to meet his family’s needs.
“We came here from Bihar to work, but there is no work. Before Corona, we would carry sacks for as much as sixteen hours to earn five hundred rupees. Now, there’s nothing. Trucks do not arrive on time, so we wait the entire day here, seven days a week and grab whatever work we get,” Rajaram Yadava, a palledar told Gaon Connection.
Hard labour and institutional indifference
Thousands of people like Siyaram Yadav and Anil Singh come to Azadpur Mandi from Bihar, eastern Uttar Pradesh, West Bengal and Jharkhand, seeking a livelihood that will give them enough to look after their families too. While everyone in the non-organised sector took a beating during the pandemic, the plight of the palledars turned terrible.
For one, the administration is indifferent about them and these workers come under the unorganised sector and are not recognised as labourers. “We’ve been here for a long time, yet no government has ever helped us financially. We don’t even have clean drinking water here, what are we talking about?” Amol Yadav, a palledar from Bihar’s Samastipur district who works for an onion agent, told Gaon Connection.
The porters cite the example of Ashok, a hard-working Azamgarh local who worked in the mandi for 20 years. He died of dengue in 2019, and there was no one to turn to.
“The Mandi has approximately two thousand five hundred arthiya (commission agents). Every commission agent employs six to fifteen palledars. Some labourers work without a commission agent too,” explained 45-year-old Prakash Kumar, who works with the palledars in Azadpur Mandi through an organisation called Sajag.
The 40,000 palledars in the mandi have not received much assistance from the government during the COVID19 crisis. “Many people faced a food shortage due to unemployment or the lockdown. So, a group of students serves them ration through an initiative called Feeding Workers of Delhi,” said Prakash Kumar.
The palledars said that even commission agents did not help them in this difficult time. There was a time when 40-year-old Rajaram Yadav from Morkahi village in Samastipur district earned between Rs 400 and Rs 500 a day. He now walks about seeking work every single day.
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How are palledars different?
Construction workers also work in the unorganised sector. However, they fall under the gambit of The Building and Other Construction Workers (Regulation of Employment and Conditions of Services) Act, 1996, and there is also a board (Delhi Building and Other Construction Workers Welfare Board) dedicated to improving their working conditions. Throughout the two-year lockdown, they have received Rs 5,000 in three tranches.
Subhash Bhatnagar, the founder of Nirman, a non-profit, was instrumental in getting this law passed for construction workers. “There is no law in Delhi for the benefit of palledars. However, there is a law enacted in 1996 for construction workers. Any project costing more than ten lakh rupees has to deposit the funds with a committee for the workers’ social security,” he told Gaon Connection.
The palledars claim that neither the central nor Delhi governments provided them food or dry rations, let alone financial help. This is because the government does not recognise palledars of the mandis as labourers.
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“A labourer died in 2019 after being hit by a truck, but there was no proof to show he was a labourer,” 25-year-old Roshan Pandey, a student who distributes ration to palledars in Azadpur Mandi, told Gaon Connection.
According to the Delhi Agricultural Produce Marketing (Regulation) Act, 1998, the APMC issues seven types of licenses, of which palledars fall in the G category. However, they don’t have easy access to the licence. But if they manage to get it, they are classified under labourers, and can seek compensation if involved in an accident.
The local government is sitting on the bill, say dissenters
Civil society organisations and non-profits have prepared the Delhi Mathadi Act and the The Delhi Mathadi, Palledars and Other Unprotected Manual Workers’ (Regulation of Employment and Welfare) Bill, 2019. This would grant unorganised workers the security of employment.
However, this bill has been put in cold storage, due to political apathy, local leaders alleged. While the Arvind Kejriwal-led government presented it before the assembly last year, it was halted by the Lt Governor. There has been no movement since then, they said.
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“The Mathadi law has been very successful in Maharashtra. When Kejriwal came into power, he promised to implement it in Delhi too, but he is only misleading the workers,” All India Mazdoor Congress President Arvind Singh said.
Gaon Connection tried to speak to the leaders of the Aam Aadmi Party in this regard, but they refused to speak. The Delhi government has been contacted; the report will be updated with their response.
