India’s Working Poor Are Being Priced Out of Basic Meals
For many migrant workers in India, the inability to cook affordably disrupts the economics of city life. As fuel becomes increasingly expensive due to market volatility and supply shocks, families are being forced to ration meals or relocate.
India’s shift to market-linked LPG pricing is passing global fuel shocks, exacerbated by the chaos in the Middle East, directly to households. As a result, India’s working poor are forced to ration gas, skip meals, or go without cooking altogether. (Sajad Hameed / Jacobin)
New Delhi, INDIA – At the edge of Hazrat Nizamuddin Railway Station, the morning feels heavier than usual. Families cluster along the platform, their belongings packed into cloth bundles and plastic sacks.
Children lie half-asleep in their mothers’ laps as announcements echo overhead. Trains heading toward Bihar, Uttar Pradesh, and beyond are running full. Over the past few days, railway workers say, the crowds have grown noticeably thicker. Entire families, most of them daily wage laborers, wait with little more than essentials, as if preparing for a longer absence.
“Something is wrong,” says Ab Rahman, thirty-four, a porter, or coolie, who has spent more than a decade navigating these railway platforms. “For four to five days now, there has been a heavy rush — mostly poor workers. They are going back.”
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