Labor in India

I moved last week. Sad to say I had to leave the cherished “gullie” to a higher class, though much safer area in Hyderabad. My wonderful roommate Archana is moving back to Pune and I was lucky enough to find two girls my age that would allow me to rent a room for the little time I am left here.

The flat is set up that it is actually two stories. There is an elevator leading up to the front door, however my room is on the second story of the house, which means stairs are necessary to get to my room. Just days before the move I had gotten into an auto accident, hurting my knee a bit, which restricted my ability to lift things, and Arjun, my friend who helped me move, was the only able body. Labor being so cheap here we asked the man that works somewhere in the flat to help us and we would pay home some extra money. I didn’t notice too much as I was running around everywhere, until he started to walk up the stairs to my room. Here was this old man, frail and petite, carrying my extremely large suit case on his shoulder. Meaning he wasn’t lifting it the way we normally do going up a stair case, but he literally lifted the suitcase onto his shoulder and was walking up the staircase with it on his tiny shoulders. My heart literally skipped a beat and I was overwhelmed with sadness. I watched him as he continued to help us, non grudgingly, ever so eagerly and just felt my heart wrench. In my opinion he should be at home, enjoying his old age and reaping the benefits of working hard all his life. Yet this is a situation with many elderly people, still required to work, and difficult physical labor on top of that, because of poverty. I asked how Arjun how much I should pay him and he suggested a price, I personally felt it was too small and asked if it was ok that I paid him more, Arjun thankfully said what I have often heard my mom say “if you feel the need to give it, then never hesitate”.

This sight is tragically common here, even in a modern city like Hyderabad. For construction work businesses use migrants workers, people who have come from their villages to find work, to construct buildings and bridges. They do what machines normally do in the western worlds. For example they transport large rocks by carrying them, or gravel or rubble on baskets over their heads. They do all this work, while also being bare foot. It’s already difficult to see very weak looking men do this work, but it’s not only them. Elderly men and women participate in the work, along with women and children. A few days back I passed by a bridge or a “fly over” in an auto on my way to a meeting and was watching these laborers sitting bellow the bridge. I got lost in the sight of a mom with torn clothes and dust all over her face feeding her child the small amount of rice she had. They were sitting in the rubble under the “fly over” to have shade from the sun.

Everyday, in every location there are strong visuals of the poverty that exists in India. I even can’t even begin to describe to you the poverty I see in the slums. Yet the days go by and people go on with their lives. Though I cannot help these people individually there are ways to help them as a large whole, which I am trying to do. However there are so many people here that have become numb to these situations. It’s tragically dominant existence in normal everyday life for locals to be constantly empathetic towards it. Though I feel that these visions should not take over someone’s life and that we should live in constant depression, again a lack of awareness still exists, meaning there are fewer opportunities to change these lifestyles in the future.

The margin between high class and low class is so incredibly large. I constantly run into families that have barely a dollar to their name, who work difficult jobs day in and day out, while there are people who have so much that they do not know what to do with their money. A significant part of higher class society here are not even aware of the situations and lifestyles that are occurring right around the corner from them. Many people I meet here are captivated by the fact that I came to India to do social work, yet they are more interested in the fact that I am from California than they are in the type of work I actually do.