Outsider-Insider: The Delhi Migrant's Precarious Position

Vinita Devi and Jyoti Kumari are sisters-in-law. They walk into the Help Centre of Janpahal in Shakarpur in East Delhi on a Saturday evening, soliciting their registration as a voter of Delhi—a first for either, after having arrived in the capital from Bihar over a decade ago. At the centre, they know what they’ve come for, but are unsure how it will be done. At least twice, there is confusion about who amongst the two of their husbands has to share the OTP. They hover in the vicinity of the monitor as the facilitator navigates the website of the Election Commission; eager to share what they know or must remember. A series of scans, images, signs and print-outs ensues, and both Devi and Kumari’s identity receive an A4 paper each, that will precede their pehchaan patra—(Voter ID), translating literally to a proof of identity, that will reify their being in the city. If a migrant’s road to feeling at home in the city of Delhi is unending and fraught, this half-an-hour of registration invokes a significant stretch of anxiety for the two women as well.

The last Census in 2011 pegged the percentage of migrants in Delhi to around 40; implying that every four out of ten people in the city were migrants. Amongst these, the electoral agency of migrant labourers vacillates between their inability to return to their home states for voting, and their exclusion from the voting lists in the destination city. Corrections to this include interventions by NGOs, sometimes a quid pro quo between a party and a worker, and in other cases, years of enumerating oneself in the city.

Devi and Kumari are not a part of any workforce. The women in their caste-group, Bhumihar Brahmins, don’t work unless the circumstances coerce them to, they say. Devi explains how inflation may unseat them from Delhi’s aspirational wagon. She breaks down the price rise: “Rice has gone up from 30 to 50, flour from 30 to 40, the fees for my children’s tuition is higher than that of school, and has shot up from Rs 700 to 1,200.” A unitary raise of 530 in total, a fraction of the extra her family must earn to get by. Her husband earns only Rs 400 a day as a daily-wage labourer; which cannot sustain their household of six. So, financial assistance becomes critical, a lever which is set to decide her electoral position. From hereon, the scheme announced by the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP), of transferring Rs 2,100 to all adolescent women, takes centre stage.

The AAP’s foray into the government of Delhi as the single-largest party in 2015 saw the migrant worker shepherd its campaign; most instrumental amongst which were the auto and cab drivers in the city. In his essay ‘Small Transport Operators as Democratic Actors: Work, Politics, and Governance in Delhi’, ethnographer Souvanik Mallick found that the party trained its eye on the drivers knowing that “when they collectivise, they are extremely powerful people, with their own voice.”

Come the 2020 Delhi elections, the AAP won 62 out of 70 seats, a feat largely credited to the efficacy of the party’s welfare schemes, and wholesale improvements in education and healthcare. The outreach to the Purvanchalis (those coming from UP and Bihar)—the largest bloc of migrant voters—in this round was lead by a battery of leaders from the region, including the likes of Sanjay Singh and Gopal Rai. Barring this representation, however, the AAP’s stance on the migrant reality of Delhi largely found a cover in their overarching work in improving the quality of life of those who come to the capital—the claims to which remain contentious at best, given the persistence of the migrant’s economic woes.

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“He’ll win our votes this time around, but what will he do next year?” Devi says when asked about AAP’s Arvind Kejriwal not fulfilling his word. But the financial cushion the party offers is crucial for women like her. “We can stand up to our husbands if they don’t earn, or don’t give us money and tell them that we have Rs 2000 too; we can buy medicines, two new pair of clothes, cover the tuition expenses of our children,” she explains, before opening up about her broader support for the AAP. “There are free bus rides, free treatment in hospitals; that he has thought of ladies so much is enough.” Kumari is emphatic in her support for the scheme. She pledges her support for Kejriwal on account of his work in health, sanitation and education. No longer tentative like they were during the registration, the women reveal their awareness of realpolitik: “Politicians are thinking of themselves first, not of us; they will always fill their own stomachs.” Asked if she will vote for another party if they promise a higher sum, Devi agrees giddily—laughing perhaps at the knowledge of her own contradictions, and compulsions too.

A direct cash transfer has always divided opinions, between economists, politicians, administrators; recipients even—more so when they’re aimed at one gender. As a Muslim cab driver from Gopalganj in Bihar says, he doesn’t want to grow “dependent on anyone, which schemes like these ultimately intend for. A sum of this order will not allow anyone to do what they really aspire to, it will only be a meagre assistance,” he says, before terming their affect as akin to rendering a people apahij, or handicapped. “I don’t avail any existing schemes by the Central Government,” he adds. Having completed his graduation in history just last year, his electoral tilt is formed by the varnish of schools in his locality, Badarpur.

“A month-and-a-half back, I went to the airport to pick up my uncle’s daughter,” the proud cab driver says. “She was returning from Paris, and was one of thirty students sent there to study French by her school.” He credits such possibilities for the “children of the poor” to the Delhi School of Specialised Excellence, and affirms his support for the AAP. Asked if the politicians and parties of Delhi have done enough to abet the aspirations that brought him to the city, he sounds dejected. “What can the government do, sir?” he asks. “Uber doesn’t pay us adequately, and the meetings between ministers and these companies don’t yield anything.”

For Delhi’s migrant labourers, upward mobility remains a presupposition. For most, however, the dream for more is met with a struggle against less. Electric rickshaw drivers stationed at the entrance of the towering banquet hall at Karkardooma metro station express the smallness the city has meted out to them. “It’s been five years since we came here. We’ve worked in 3-4 factories, and have been driving rickshaws since the past couple of years. There’s no work of late. We’re just living hand-to-mouth,” says Monu Kumar, who came to Delhi from Badaun five years ago. Like Kumari and Devi, he’s vociferous in his need and demand for financial support from the state: “My vote will go to whosoever pays us rickshaw-wallas more money...We’ll do something using the money they give us,” Kumar argues. He and his driver friends assert their support for Arvind Kejriwal, however—attributing to him the improvement in education and the services for the poor in Delhi.

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Surprisingly, the AAP went on to contradict its own position on migration, by proposing reservation of jobs for the ‘locals’ in the Uttarakhand and Goa elections—both of which it lost. Even now, the party’s schemes doling out financial assistance to women, Dalit students and priests; and the pre-existing subsiding of electricity and water bills do not account for the specifics of the migrant condition: absence of legal proofs, proneness to manipulation and exclusion as tenants. The migrant refrain in the party’s politics then remains subsumed under its one-size-fits-all welfare measures—meaningful for those alone who are lucky to find a way to avail them.

The support for largesse notwithstanding, cracks in the welfare populism of the AAP persist. Anju Mondal, who came to Delhi from West Bengal more than a couple of decades ago says that electricity and water are free for home owners alone, and not for the migrant families who mostly live on rent. “Nothing is free for us,” she argues—a refrain other tenants who are migrants echo. Asked about voting in Delhi, Mondal says: Modi and the BJP, for “they’re doing good for the country.” A fruit seller from Bihar, near New Ashok Nagar metro station, too, says his vote will go to those “safeguarding his religion, for everything else is secondary.” That Modi himself won’t rule the city is not a contention, he is sure they “will appoint someone to look after it.”

None of the migrant workers spoken to see their precarious location as an outsider-insider being addressed by any political party. Ironically though, the BJP, the AAP and the Congress remain eager to lay claim to the rights and well-being of the community—in particular the Purvanchalis. The recent exchange of allegations between the BJP and the AAP on ‘disrespecting’ and ‘insulting’ Purvanchalis is the latest in this attempt, with both parties trying to become a custodian of the group, and galvanise their votes. The Congress too has promised a special ghat upon its return to power, for the Chhath Pooja, one of the most cherished festival of this populace. The quotidian concerns of the migrant community though continue to await a redressal.

(Views expressed are personal)

Raunaq Saraswat is an independent journalist and writer from Aligarh. He lives in Delhi

(This appeared in the print as 'waiting for OTP')