SEWA members in Misir Gonda, Kanke, in Ranchi, are domestic workers. Most of them were unable to go to work during the lockdown. In the grips of the financial crisis, when even food essentials became hard to come by, masks were a luxury that couldn’t be afforded.
At the peak of the lockdowns imposed in a bid to prevent the spread of Covid-19, 80 Customer Service Points (CSPs) who are financial intermediaries of formal banks, carried out cash transactions worth INR 10Cr for 25,000 customers in villages of Uttarakhand.
Chikmoon Bibi of Shibpur Village in West Bengal used to roll beedis along with her daughter and daughter in-law to support her family of six.
In October 2018, SEWA Delhi organized a ‘My Fair Home Campaign’- in New Ashok Nagar, Delhi; a place that is home to approximately 3000 women domestic workers.
The concerns arising through the lockdown are endless; displacement, hunger, lack of shelter and distress with employment being the most paramount. With everyone held up indoors, there has been a significant rise of domestic violence cases reported across the country. One of SEWA’s community members, Manju Ben reported the same in one of the meetings. She was being abused by her husband and sister-in-law.
A resident of Samaspur village in Uttarakhand, Sheelaben is one of the oldest aagewans in SEWA, and one whose energy is difficult to match. She had moved to Dehradun with her husband as a young bride, and to support their family of 7, she learned stitching, estimating her measurements as she had never received a primary education.
The community members of Mubarakpur and Danapur communicated their distress and anxieties of having to die of starvation if food supplies did not reach them any sooner. Understanding the emergency of the situation, SEWA aagewans redirected their efforts and channelled in supplies from the government and distributed it among community members by the ward councillor.
Families living in lane number 200 of Jahangirpuri’s B Block had always stepped inside their homes with muddy shoes. Dirty water overflowing from clogged drains along the lane would meander down, making its way inside the homes of those living on the ground floor.
B1 jhuggi (slum) was established around 1984 as part of Raghubir Nagar, which lies in West Delhi. For over 10 years now, the main road, on the corner of which B1 jhuggi is settled, has had streetlights. Over the years, these have been upgraded on multiple occasions, but they function erratically, leading to accidents, multiple cases of theft, as well as harassment.
Pushpa behen, 40, was born in Benaras, far away from the city of Dehradun, where she currently lives. She had finished her 10th class in the year 1999, when she was married off. “He was only 8th pass and drove trucks for a living.”, she says. After her marriage, she had to shift to a region completely unfamiliar to her own lived experience.
