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Worried about starving to death in the Indian capital because of Covid-19 2
The initial blockade order lasting 21 days has now been extended to 6 weeks.
`Our rations are very small. They are not enough for my whole family,` Devi said.
Children line up to receive relief rice and beans at a slum in Kapasheda area, Delhi, April 7.
Devi comes from the city of Fatehpur in the state of Uttar Pradesh, about 560 km north of New Delhi.
Paying $26 in rent, she and her daughters make ends meet on less than $2 a day, including tuition.
The homeowners do not want Devi to help anymore during this period.
`I used to work in their house and now they slam the door in my face. They say I could infect them. I only have a few rupees left in my pocket. Should I use them to pay rent or buy milk?`
Every day at about 4 p.m., Devi stands outside a school in Nilothi, lining up to receive rice and beans for dinner.
In Kapasheda, about 22 km from Nilothi, Seema Sardar and Kanika Vishvas, both local workers, said they were fired without receiving any money to help them survive.
Sardar’s employer, who lives in a villa in a wealthy area of the capital New Delhi, has been in the US since early March and has not paid her April salary.
Nearly half of India’s 476 million workers are freelance workers, 36% receive seasonal wages and only 17% are regular wage workers.
On March 24, Prime Minister Narendra Modi issued one of the world’s strictest blockades, completely suspending public transportation, but he did not specify how the government would support the poor.
The government then announced relief measures, providing each citizen with 5 kg of rice/wheat flour for the next three months along with a kg of peas for each family.
In Delhi state, the government announced it would provide grain to 7.2 million people, equivalent to 40% of the state’s population.
The state government said it has distributed meals to 1,635 locations, including public schools and homeless shelters, helping to sustain 1.2 million residents.
Dipa Sinha, an economist at Ambedkar University, points out that the PDS cannot cover the entire population of Delhi.
More than three million workers make ends meet thanks to temporary, daily-wage jobs in India’s capital.
`Nearly 70% of Delhi’s population, or 13 million people, live in slums. Only 7.2 million people are registered as beneficiaries under the food security law but 6.5 million people may remain
In slums adjacent to Delhi’s rich and middle-class neighborhoods, residents, especially women and the elderly, say they are battling hunger and insecurity because they cannot find work.
At a construction site in Chanakyapuri’s Anand Niketan area, where many government offices and foreign embassies are located, Rajkumar Oraon, a worker from central India, said 30 migrants, including women,
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Seema Sardar, right, and Kanika Vishvas, two laborers working in Kapasheda, southwest Delhi.
`We mixed rice with water and lived for three days. On March 28, after a local teacher found out, he cooked a meal with rice and chickpeas for us, but the food cart was not
Munni Chauhan, a widow in her 60s who works as a thread cutter for garment export companies, walks more than a kilometer every day to the southwest Delhi district committee office to protest the blockade.
She said she had run out of money and food.
She claimed she was registered in the Aadhaar biometric database, a mandatory condition to receive social security benefits, but still did not receive her ration card.
Social security experts say India has no shortage of food, so the government must open reserves to provide for the poor.
`The current food stock of the Food Corporation of India (a state-owned company) is over 77 million tonnes, three times the buffer stock requirement and enough to meet the immediate food needs of
According to Jasmine Shah from the non-profit organization Delhi Dialogue and Development Commission (AAP), those who do not have a ration card issued by the local government must apply for an `e-voucher`.
`Over 1.5 million people registered for e-vouchers last week and 0.3 million people received ration thanks to the new system,` Shah said.
But many workers said they had difficulty applying for `electronic votes` because this requires using smartphones, which most of them do not have.
In Nilothi, Saira Khatun, a construction worker in her 40s, said she could not register because she did not know how to use a smartphone.
According to Jameesa Khatun, a local worker who earns $27 as a maid, digital service provider employees ask for $4 to help workers register.
Mohammed Gulzar, an auto mechanic, said he has a smartphone but still cannot register because last week, the website crashed due to too much traffic.
According to Shah, the technical problem has been resolved.
Activist Johri called on the government to build a simpler system that anyone can easily use during the current crisis.
`Economists recommend urgent measures and states should avoid trying to appear ‘smart’ by setting up complex systems,` Johri said.