-TheWire.in The Narela industrial complex is one of the biggest in Asia, packed with booming small-scale industrial units. It runs entirely on the labour of low-income workers who have very little say on their pay and living conditions. In order to start liberalising trade and industrial production capacity through economic policy, the Indian nation-state began implementing a set of Washington Consensus style neo-liberal economic reforms in the early 1990s. The liberalisation push across...

-Newsclick.in The case study of Narela shows that informal workers exist in a perpetual cycle of precariousness, distress and displacement in a megacity. The case study of Narela shows that informal workers exist in a perpetual cycle of precariousness, distress and displacement in a megacity. While this cycle could be broken through interventions in the realms of social provisioning and legislative framework, the State’s policies instead seem to be working towards strengthening...

-Hindustan Times Delhi air was cleaner on Diwali eve in 2021 than it was in 2019 and 2020. Things went downhill rapidly. Delhi woke up to one of its most polluted mornings this year after Diwali, according to Air Quality Index (AQI) data, with farm fires in Punjab and Haryana, and the use of fireworks on Diwali night (Thursday) contributing to the spike. To be sure, AQI is not the best metric for...

-Newsclick.in Farmlands in Narela’s Garhi Bakhtawarpur village remain flooded for eight months a year due to an overflowing drain. Saving his crops from the overflowing local pond spread across five acres in Garhi Bakhtawarpur village, in Narela, seems to be an eternal battle for Ritesh Rana. Pointing to an inundated patch of farms, Rana said that his family owns 30 acres. However, owning such prime land in the national capital is not beneficial...

-Leaflet.in Workers and activists claim that the situation on ground remains grim while AAP’s welfare announcements are marked with delay and laxity in implementation. Amidst a citywide lockdown that is now in its fifth week with a positivity rate that has come down to its lowest – less than 5% – in the last 45 days in Delhi, desperation is growing now in several of the national capital’s industrial areas and pushing...