As the police van passed by, 25-year-old Mamta didn't pay any heed. She just clasped her one-year-old daughter tightly against her chest and started patting, so that she could sleep. A month had passed since Prime Minister Narendra Modi had announced a 21-day lockdown on March 24, 2020, the first of several due to Covid.
Two years have passed since that day, but nothing much has changed. The only relief for Mamta is that her daughter can now walk and talk, so it is not as tough as before to manage her. That allows Mamta to help her family with household chores. I met Mamta when I was covering stories of migrant labourers during the lockdown. I visited some makeshift houses in the Shivpuri district of Madhya Pradesh where 10-odd Gadia Lohar families were staying.
For Mamta, every day was like a year during the lockdown, as her husband had abandoned her and their daughter. Now she was being considered as a burden by her own family, as she was living in her father바카라s makeshift house, where her brother바카라s family also lived.
Gadia Lohars are classified as a 바카라nomadic tribe바카라 who traditionally make metal utensils and instruments. They don바카라t stay in one place but keep on changing their abode from city to city for work.
Last Wednesday, when I called Mamta바카라s uncle Ramnarayan to find out how he was, he said he was not satisfied with how things had turned out since the Covid lockdowns, but it was looking up. He is in the Morena district of Madhya Pradesh these days. 바카라Who listens to the poor? No one. We are working, making utensils as we were doing then.바카라
Talking about Mamta, Ramnarayan said, 바카라You tell me, at this age, her husband had left her, what should we do? Her life is destroyed. We are trying to contact her husband to see if he would take her back.바카라 When I asked him why they weren't remarrying her, he said, 바카라Nobody will marry her now.바카라
Two years ago, when I met 67-year-old Ramnarayan, he was sitting on a plastic chair, surrounded by his sons who were griping about police beating them up for working during the lockdown.
I asked him how the lockdowns had been for him, Ramnarayan had nothing but complaints against the administration, claiming they were not allowing him to do anything. 바카라My son can바카라t sell these utensils, because there is a lockdown here. Police beat us for going out.바카라
Mamta is the daughter of Ramnarayan's younger brother, who was himself stuck in a different city during the first lockdown. They were then dependent on ration provided by NGOs. Though Ramnarayan바카라s family have ration cards, not all Gadia Lohars do. His family also had Jan Dhan accounts, opened under the Centre's scheme to provide affordable access to financial services for the poor. They had waited in long queues, risking their lives, to get the monthly Rs 500 provided by the central government to poor women during the lockdown. But that was not enough for them, "How can we run a family of six with just Rs 500?" asked Saroj, a member of the Gadia Lohar settlement.
Sanitation was at the heart of the fight against Covid-19. But for Gadia Lohars, rather than Covid-19, their biggest problem was other health-related concerns that emerged due to the unhygienic conditions in which they live, which in turn made them more vulnerable to infection.
