On March 29, four days after Prime Minister Narendra Modi announced that all establishments and public transport would be shut down to prevent the spread of coronavirus, Rashmi Ahirwar and her husband, Rakesh, picked up their bags and left. They planned to walk 570 km to their village in Tikamgarh, Madhya Pradesh, to survive the lockdown.

But the Ahirwars were turned back by the Delhi police. They had to walk back to the construction site in Delhi University’s South Campus where they have worked and lived for the past year.

“We were carrying grains. We could have cooked on the way and managed,” said Rashmi, as she set her bags down.

The government has announced a Covid-19 relief package of Rs 1.7 lakh crore, a meagre 0.8 percent of the gross domestic product. However, labour economists calculate that the working poor like the Ahirwars, who constitute nearly 90 percent of all workers, have suffered an earnings loss of nearly double this, at Rs 3.5 lakh crore since the lockdown. Activists say the government has failed to provide low-wage workers with any income support.

Rakesh and Rashmi Ahirwar are among over 40 workers at two construction sites on the college campus. Like a vast majority of India’s workforce, a month after the lockdown was announced, no state relief has reached them.

On March 28, the couple had met Subodh, a representative of the labour contractor of the Central Public Works Department, the central government agency in charge of public sector works. He had paid them Rs 6,000 for the work done by both of them over 21 days, from February 29 to March 21, and an additional Rs 2,000 as “kharchi”, a weekly installment of cash for expenses that the contractor adjusted against their wages. He had given them Rs 6,000 as expenses, in installments of Rs 2,000, over the previous three weekends.

Their combined wages for over 21 days of work came to Rs 14,000, or Rs 333 a day. This is less than 60 percent of the daily minimum wage in Delhi for “unskilled work” – Rs 570 a day, as notified in October 2019.

For the Ahirwars and seven other families at the same site who too had tried to walk back home in a group – seven women, nine men, and nine infants — the payments from the contractor was a signal that they could leave.

“The contractor usually pays only the ‘kharchi’ weekly. The wage payment is done after some months, after the work is finished,” said Narayan Kumar, the contractor’s representative at the site. “There is no written contract, and if he has paid the wage, the workers interpret it to mean the contract is done.”

One of the workers, Roopram Ahirwar, who is in his 40s, said he was eager to return to his home in Tikamgarh, Madhya Pradesh. He was willing to walk all the way because only one of his children, six years old, lived with him on the construction site.

“Our children cannot go to school in Delhi as schools ask for residence proof. Two of my children who are 10 and eight are back home with my elderly mother. Who will take care of them in the lockdown?” said Roopram, who never went to school himself.

“Apne aap ghabrahat hoti hai. Yahan mann bhaari hota hai,” said Roopram. “I feel heavy-hearted and anxious here.”

Another worker in his late teens, Phoolchand Kevat, was thrashed by the police at Rao Tula Ram Marg when he tried to leave the construction site and walk home. The police forced him to return to the site.

“But what will we live on here?” he said. “Employers care only about whether we work and are productive. They will not care for us during lockdown.”

At a second site on the university campus, near Aryabhatta College, live 20 Adivasi workers from Jharkhand’s Godda. They ran out of rations after three days and survived on rice with saltwater until a few college teachers arranged for the delivery of cooked meals. But the workers were anxious as the food van did not stop by every day.

Kishore Oraon, one of the workers, said the contractor had last paid him and his wife three months ago. They had received cash for 60 days of work. Since then, the contractor has given a “kharchi” of Rs 1,000 per week per person.

A second labour contractor at this adjoining site paid them Rs 250 a day, less than half of Delhi’s minimum wage for “unskilled work”.

‘Governments flout labour laws’

None of the over 40 workers at the two sites run by labour contractors of the Central Public Works Department received the mandatory provident fund or social security benefits at the rate of 12 percent of their wages, contributed by the worker and the employer and deposited with the Employees’ Provident Fund Organisation.