Meet the men earning 40p an hour rebuilding India’s corridors of power

On a cold winter’s evening in the heart of Delhi, Mohammed Ashraf* is one of more than 9,000 labourers hard at work transforming India’s corridors of power, even as he struggles to change his own family’s quality of life.

Ashraf is working on the most prestigious and hotly-debated construction project in the country, a 134 billion rupees (£1.3bn) plan to redevelop the capital’s Central Vista with plush new offices for public servants, a new residence for prime minister Narendra Modi and a state-of-the-art new parliament building.

It’s a challenging task undertaken in tough conditions and behind a veil of secrecy – the entire construction site along what was the colonial-era Kingsway is hidden behind a huge metal fence – yet Ashraf and his fellow workers take home a daily wage of just Rs 400. With an average work day stretching from 10 hours up to 12 at the most, this works out at about 40p an hour.

After basic daily expenses, Ashraf struggles to put aside even the meagre savings required to pay his children’s school fees of just Rs 3,000 a year, leaving him worried about the prospect of carving out a better future for them. With his money worries, he joins the thousands of other critics of the project who argue the funds could have been better spent elsewhere.

“We already have a Parliament House. Instead of building a new one, had PM Modi given it [the budget] to poor families, it would have saved many from sleeping hungry at night,” he says.

The 37-year-old is among the more than 4,000 workers assigned to the new parliament construction, a section which Modi wants to be ready by December 2022. But Ashraf, who is originally from the eastern West Bengal state and has at least 13 other labourers working under him, strongly doubts it will be ready by that deadline.

He points in the direction of the construction site and two tower cranes moving at a snail’s pace a few hundred metres away.

“No, no, looks absolutely difficult,” he says. “There’s so much work pending inside. All the walls are not completely up yet, plastering needs to be done, there’s marble flooring, ceilings need to be built… just impossible,” he exclaims, before adding that he is sure the project will bleed into 2023.

The area being redeveloped, also known as Lutyens’ Delhi after the British architect who designed it, is one of the last vestiges of Britain’s dark colonial past in India. More than 17 per cent of the world’s population is governed from these premier, red-stoned colonial-era buildings and alleys outlined by neatly manicured lawns.

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The area and its adjoining roads leading to the presidential palace – formerly the Viceroy’s house – and Indian parliament house now lie dismantled, dusty and chaotic, with roads turned upside down as Modi’s project takes shape.

Thousands of workers wearing yellow and orange helmets and fluorescent green construction vests move around on foot, carrying construction material on their heads, while some work on machines.

The construction site, spread out a little over two miles, is heavily barricaded and concealed with green steel sheets. When they finally come down – by 2024, the government hopes – Delhi will boast a new parliament house, new homes for the prime minister and the vice president, new offices for all his ministers and new museums showcasing independent India’s history.

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A dozen critical ministerial offices and residences will be razed to the ground to make space for what Modi wants to be a fresh chapter of Indian politics and power elites as he seeks another re-election in 2024.

But while he will by then be living in one of the finest houses in the land, migrant labourers like Ashraf working on the project have metal boxes for accommodation – row after row of aluminium storage containers with 14 men crammed into each one to sleep.

Krishna Sharma* and Dilip Raj* thank their stars for the reconstruction, because it brought them out of their village and closer to their childhood dream of seeing India Gate, the iconic monument at the far end of the Rajpath.

And now they are more than just seeing India Gate – they are working there.

“It is a matter of pride for us, we are helping renovate [the area around] India Gate, you know. We used to think as kids of the day we will finally travel to Delhi and see it,” says Raj, 24, who came to the city just last month.

“Now look at us. We are building it and visiting it every day,” he says, smiling shyly.

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But do they know what the project, or its grandeur, is really about?

“India Gate is being repaired, we do not know beyond that,” Sharma, 22, who has worked on several construction projects around Delhi since 2018, tells The Independent.

“I was told, ‘come report here, we need unskilled labourers’. So we came and I brought my friends along,” he says.

Now, 14 of his friends from his native village work here and make Rs 400 per day, similar to Ashraf. There is no health insurance provided, nor any fixed days off. Some workers toil round the week, taking home as much money as they can.

“Whatever we do, we take a risk. We know that,” says Raj.

He remembers one time a man on his previous work site fell from a high-storey building and died.

“My boss paid his family Rs 500,000 as ex gratia,” counting it as one of the perks he knows he will be due in the event that the worst might befall him at work.

The two friends ask their supervisor for Rs 1,000 every week for expenses, something that will ultimately be deducted from their final pay.

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Nonetheless, Raj has kind words for his supervisor, pointing out that “if I face any medical emergency or if I run out of cooking gas or food ration, I can ask him for money. He will ultimately deduct the amount from my final pay, but he is nice.”

They leave for work at 8am, report for duty in front of India Gate and work till 6-7pm, shifting iron rods from one location to another and preparing the stone and other materials for the walls of the new structures.

While Raj and Sharma’s cargo container home is even more crowded than Ashraf’s, they say their biggest concern is that their monthly pay has been delayed for three successive months.

“We were told we will get money on the 12th of every month, but the money came eventually on 22 November. And even December’s pay ultimately came on the 15th,” says Sharma.

While daily wages in the last decade increased by about 55 per cent – with an increase of about 30 per cent since Mr Modi took power in 2014 – the country’s inflation surged as well and doubled in just three years to 6.62 per cent in 2020 from 3.33 per cent in 2017.

A few metres from where they work, a lanky teenager walks out of the construction site with a visibly old gentleman, the evening traffic light reflected from their vests.

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This is 19-year-old Jamal Khan*, who is neither proud nor experienced enough to be working on this construction project.

He is, however, a fit candidate for supervisors looking to meet deadlines challenged and violated by the Omicron wave, Delhi’s months-long battle with air pollution, a subsequent ban on vehicles carrying construction material and uninterrupted early January rains.

Khan, originally from one of India’s poorest states Bihar, has toiled as a labourer since he was 16 years old to support his family.

Attending and finishing high school was not even an option because a family of nine – father, mother, four sisters and two brothers – had to be fed. He was forced to drop out after the 6th grade (aged around 11 or 12) to pick up menial jobs.

Khan says he eventually left the country, hearing from a relative that he could get better money in neighbouring Nepal. He found jobs earning a minimum of Rs 600 a day, more than what even more senior labourers get on the Central Vista project.

“I wouldn’t have come back to India. No one pays me enough here,” he says. Sadly, the Covid pandemic struck, and Khan says he had to return to help look after his family.

On the Central Vista project he receives no perks at all beyond the daily wage – not even a place in a cargo container for shelter. He rents basic accommodation away from the site, more expenses eating into his pay.

The Independent approached a senior Central Public Works Department official and a contractor about the issues of pay and conditions for workers, but both declined to comment.

When they go to bed at night, Ashraf says he thinks about who he can ask for a goodwill loan to pay his children’s school fees, while Raj dreams of the suit he wants to buy for himself before leaving Delhi for good.

Sharma and Khan say they will take each day as it comes and hope above all that another Covid lockdown doesn’t shut down the project – because worse than the pay and conditions at the Central Vista would be the potentially deadly prospect of having no work at all.

*Names changed on request