In the long history of Delhi, the construction of the British capital of New Delhi is a pivotal moment, shaping the city’s geography, politics and economy. After declaring Delhi as their new capital in 1911, the colonial government undertook a mammoth task to construct this new administrative city by acquiring around 200 villages. After large-scale land acquisition, the new city had to be constructed. Thousands of migrant workers laboured to this end from 1911-1932. While we know that Delhi’s population grew significantly after 1911 due to the influx of migrant workers, the exact numbers are not known. Both quantitative and qualitative data is much clearer from the late 1920s, in large part due to more thorough census records and an expansive survey undertaken by the Royal Labour Commission. There was an exponential rise in Delhi’s population between 1920-1940 due to the entry of migrant workers to the city and increased industrial activity. In 1929, the Industrial Surveyor recorded that over 22,000 workers were employed in the construction activities. There were seven major camps in and around what was soon to become New Delhi, primarily around the Connaught Place and Safdarjang Area. The Safdarjang camp was one of the largest, housing 9,000 migrant workers. Various smaller camps housed construction workers from Rajputana Agency, the United Provinces and Punjab. Overall, 13,000 construction workers lived within New Delhi camps, with others living in Paharganj, Old Delhi, Sabzimandi and so on. Workers who came to Delhi for these construction projects were in some cases seasonal migrants, but in large part permanent migrants – arriving as family units of women, men and children – who all worked at the construction sites. According to reports by the Industrial Surveyor and the Royal Commission of Labour, women could earn as low as 7 annas a day, while men received somewhere between 8-12 annas– neither amount sufficient to pay rent and procure food, particularly when these workers were the sole earners in their families. Most workers were heavily indebted to local moneylenders, with interest rates as high as 35-40% trapping them into an unceasing cycle of dependence. These moneylenders were often contractors who recruited peasants from their villages to come work in the city, lending them money and food for the journey. They also owned the shops in the vicinity of the camps, supplying basic food supplies to the workers, again through loans at high interest rates. The low frequency of wage payments (once a month) further increased indebtedness. One worker testified to the Royal Commission on Labour (1931) that a weekly wage would have allowed him to be able to directly buy in cash, rather than being dependent on loans for much of the month until he finally received the wage in hand. This worker took care of seven dependents who all lived in the construction camp – a not unusual state at the time. Even by contemporary standards, the working and living conditions of these workers were abysmal. Delhi’s Industrial Surveyor described their horrific conditions in a memo to the Royal Labour Commission. Construction workers (or “coolies” in colonial terminology) were not provided with any housing. Rather, they were forced to dig their own huts, which were “partially underground,” with little to no sunlight, and around five feet high. These huts housed entire families – on an average of five people per hut. Workers (men, women and children) laboured on construction sites between sunset and sundown for up to 10-11 hours by official estimates. To earn enough for basic food and rent, these workers often stayed on overtime. Despite an expected two hour rest period, workers were not provided with this measure in the winter, when daylight hours were shorter. They were often given as little as half-an-hour in summer months. While government reports do not paint these camps in any good light, survey reports reveal even worse accounts. The minimum legal age to work in construction and industrial areas was 12. Children between 12-15 were considered child labour but those of 15 and above were treated as adults in the eyes of the law – a practice that led to chronic health issues given the severe overwork during this developmental period. In practice, children as young as 10 and 11 worked as long as their parents on construction sites. They earned about a tenth of adult workers wages. Surveyors inspecting one such site between 1929-1931 reported the following: “We found two boys, one 10 years of age and the other 11 years. One boy was emaciated, weak and appeared to have had nothing to eat. He had no clothing and was perfectly naked, a skeleton, getting 2 annas per day. There was another boy, 10 years old, getting 1 anna 6 pies per day. One comes to this place coming from the Western Hostel on the way to the station. They are building the new printing press…”Construction work in the city slowed down after 1931, when New Delhi was inaugurated. Given the joint migration by entire family units and their long term, annual work on construction sites, a sizable population of these workers had lived in the city for over a decade, some for more than two, and had lost meaningful ties to their villages. Thousands of workers lived in camps that were quickly becoming an eyesore for the city’s elite. From being the necessary labour to produce the orderly imperial capital, these workers increasingly became a problem for what the city was meant to be in the eyes of the state1. By 1932, colonial officials were debating appropriate measures to remove these workers from their homes in New Delhi to adjust the labour population to the changing and reduced demands. One official with the Department of Industries and Labour asked for an inquiry into which of the workers were in fact long term residents and which were “squatters who have come from Delhi City to secure free housing and other amenities.” The PWD brought a lawsuit against 1,700 workers in one of the labour camps, claiming that they had “forcibly occupied the site,” despite strong evidence to the contrary. Workers were represented by welfare associations such as the Rural Reconstruction League of India, consisting of Indian and British social workers. Even as they faced the prospect of displacement and homelessness, many of these workers were still owed wages for their labour on construction sites months after the work had ceased. Workers from various construction camps wrote a series of pleas and petitions, articulating their case. In some cases, workers also filed their own court cases to prevent being displaced. These petitions emphasised the long-term residency of the workers in labour camps, their lost ties to villages, and their new roots in the city, including the birth of their offsprings who had known nothing but the city. For example, over 100 workers from the Safdarjang labour camp petitioned the government in protest of the resettlement plan. They agreed to vacate the labour camp in six weeks as long as they were allowed to construct proper housing within the vicinity of New Delhi. In many instances, workers rejected the option of being moved to the peripheries of the city, far from their workplaces. They argued that such a move would reduce family wages. Women would lose employment as they could not travel long distances for work, given their burden of housework and childcare. Most often, despite eviction notices, workers continued to stay in these camps as they simply had nowhere else to go, with resettlement sites either being far too peripheral or not being offered at all. One of the major resettlement sites, Jangpura, was highly unappealing due to its distance from the city.Mired in court cases from both ends and faced with the workers’ refusal to leave their homes, the state employed various strategies to remove workers. The most frequent of these being to forcefully evict them by demolishing their huts. However, this strategy was simply too slow for Public Works Department (PWD)officials. For example, in a letter dated March 28, 1933, the Secretary to the Chief Commissioner in the PWD complained to the Chief Commissioner that demolition drives that evicted nearly 2,500 people barely made a dent in the overall percentages. In the same letter he stated that given this “slow” pace of displacement via demolition drives “it has become apparent that we shall have to pursue the present procedure more vigorously.” This impatience indicates as to why the authorities had started undertaking more drastic actions in the effort to displace workers from the beginning of 1933. In a sudden escalation in January 1933, state officials took the decision to cut off all drinking water supply to workers across several labor camps in a bid to force them to Jangpura2. Officials took this decision in the peak of Delhi’s winter (January 1933), at a time when lack of shelter would have led to serious diseases and fatality. According to a Hindustan Times report dated January 22, 1933, this decision to deny workers drinking water affected about 10,000 residents – forcing them into an impossible choice between a home without livelihood or livelihood without a home. Over the next few years, the state continued to use various strategies in order to forcefully evict workers through lawsuits, demolition drives and denial of amenities. These workers, facing a housing and livelihood crisis in the middle of the Depression, became part of the growing unemployed sector as businesses shrank and factories closed. This precarious and surplus labour population also affected emerging workers’ movements in the city, according to colonial industrial and labour records. The high rate of unemployment made it difficult for striking workers to maintain a picket line effectively as cheap labour was always available. The high demand for jobs due to this surplus population and a shrinking market also drove down workers’ wages. Workers became increasingly replaceable, their bargaining power declined and more often than not, they were forced to work for lower wages. Echoes of this story remain familiar. Workers’ lives in Delhi’s colonial labour camps are impossible to imagine – from living partially underground to a complete absence of child labour laws. Post-Independence Delhi (along with other cities) have seen a number of violent displacement drives to “clean-up” the city. In many of these cases, workers have been provided inadequate rehabilitation in the peripheries of the city, with similar impacts on access to work, hitting female workers particularly hard. Construction workers are forced to work in dangerous and often fatal conditions. Indebtedness continues to structure working conditions and livelihoods. Mass demolition drives have not abated, but have increased exponentially in the last decade. The story of New Delhi’s construction workers is almost entirely absent in the histories written and told about the city. And yet, it remains all too present for the city’s migrant and informal sector workers: shaped by relentless rounds of forced evictions and worsening housing insecurity.Footnotes:“Reduction of the Labour Population in New Delhi,” Chief Commissioner’s Office, Department of Industries, 1932, File No. 98, Delhi State Archives “Measures adopted to reduce the Labour Population in New Delhi,” Chief Commissioners Office, Department of Industries, File No. 55, 1933, Delhi State ArchivesRagini Jha is a doctoral student of history at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst.