By following Syeda’s journey—from trimming the loose threads of jeans to cooking namkeen, and from shelling almonds to making tea strainers—Neha Dixit tries to capture the lived realities of the many faceless migrant women in India’s bustling capital city of Delhi.
For independent journalist Neha Dixit, The Many Lives of Syeda X: The Story of an Unknown Indian (2024) was born out of a desire to report on women as “legitimate and equal citizens of the world”. Towards the end of 2014, she began meeting working-class women in Delhi to find out what their average day looked like.
Through the help of the Bigul Mazdoor Dasta, an organisation that focuses on workers’ rights, Neha met women who were part of a group of almond workers on strike in 2009 in north-east Delhi. These women did not have fixed wages or fixed workplaces; many of them would not even recognise that they worked because they were so used to doing unpaid work. In Delhi, one of the largest centres for small-scale industries in India, these women working at ‘piece-meal’ rates are crucial, yet unseen.
One of these women was Syeda X, who moved to Delhi from Varanasi in 1995 with her husband and three children in the aftermath of riots triggered by the demolition of the Babri Masjid in Ayodhya. In Delhi, she continued to move to the peripheries, from Chandni Chowk to Sabhapur to Karawal Nagar, juggling multiple jobs—over 50 in almost three decades—always on the edge of precarity.
Home-based workers like Syeda are often primary breadwinners of their families despite the paltry wages they make toiling between 12 to 16 hours a day. Part of India’s informal economy, and instrumental to its functioning, these women are not considered workers—by the state, their employers, male-dominated trade unions—and oftentimes, not even by themselves.
With no social security, no time-based wages, no days off for illnesses, and the constant demands on her body to work, Neha writes, “Syeda’s life is a portal to a harsh, often brutal, world hidden away from elite Indians. It is the story of untold millions and an account of urban life in New India.”
Read a short excerpt from the chapter ‘Almond’ here:
By September 2009, India had emerged as the fourth-largest export market for California almonds after Spain, Germany and China.
Unprocessed almonds and walnuts from the US, Canada and Australia are imported by Indian traders in Khari Baoli in Chandni Chowk who then hire subcontractors in Karawal Nagar, Sant Nagar, Burari, Narela, Sonia Vihar and other such areas in north east Delhi to process them. The subcontractors employ home-based workers to manually shell and package the almond kernels for peanuts—woefully low wages especially compared to the prices at which the nuts are sold in the export market.
Every day trucks arrived with large gunny bags that were stored at the sixty-odd almond factories in Karawal Nagar. Each factory had twenty to forty women workers who would often arrive with their children and work twelve hours a day, and up to sixteen hours in the winter months. They worked under the strict eye of the supervisors who would ensure that the women and children didn’t eat the almonds they were shelling. But some still managed to pop a few into their mouths when the supervisors were not looking.
Syeda had been fired from the pressure cooker factory job for going on leave because she had cholera. She was now working at the almond factory.
Experienced workers like Syeda and Lalita handled two bags a day. They were paid Rs 50 for processing one bag of 23 kilos but the godown owners made somewhere between Rs 125 and Rs 150 for the same bag for processing. The processed, packaged almonds were then sent back to the merchants of central Delhi who supplied them back to the multinational companies of the West, making around Rs 7,000 per bag.
The Badaam Mazdoor Union had been trying to negotiate better wages for the workers. One day, when Syeda and Lalita visited Radiowali’s place after their shift was over, they found sitting there the woman accompanying Ramesh on his inquiry rounds. Radiowali introduced her as Seema, Ramesh’s colleague.
She began talking to the women, asking about their families, where they lived and what their children did. The women in turn asked her about her marital status, her caste. Seema patiently answered their questions even as she slipped in remarks about the need to unionize.
There should be safe and hygienic working conditions!
They cannot employ you without providing even a toilet!
They have to provide you with regular employment!
They must take care of medical expenses if there is an accident. Even give compensation!
There should be a crèche inside the factory for young mothers. This will only happen if you become part of a union. If you fight together . . . !
There were many questions. What is a union? Syeda had seen a millworkers’ union in an Amitabh Bachchan film but she had never heard of a union with women in it. For decades, labour movements have made demands and successfully negotiated for workers’ rights. But most trade unions across the globe unionized, mobilized and strategized for workers in a particular sector, in a defined workspace.
There were many questions. What is a union? Syeda had seen a millworkers’ union in an Amitabh Bachchan film but she had never heard of a union with women in it.
Home-based workers like the women here didn’t work in a fixed industry or at a single workspace. All work is seasonal. It comes and goes. Factories open and shut down. Subcontractors come and go.
After the passing of the Unorganised Workers’ Social Security Act, Ramesh and Seema were working hard to form some sort of union for the home-based workers. They had been successful in mobilizing some almond workers in other parts of north east Delhi.
‘Have any of you met with an accident in a factory?’ Seema asked.
‘Many times,’ they replied.
‘Did any factory owner pay for your medical expense, forget compensation?’ she asked.
‘No,’ they said.
‘But it is your right,’ she replied.
Lalita turned around to Radiowali. ‘What are you nodding for? Didn’t Poonam’s son burn his fingers with acid while scraping out metal for aluminium wires in your factory? It took him six months to heal.’
Radiowali was quiet.
Roopmati turned around and told her, ‘She doesn’t run the factory. She also works there. Why are you targeting her?’
The others agreed. ‘Roopmati is right.’
Lalita was quiet.
Syeda recounted the numerous accidents at a thread ply factory where she had worked as an operator on a twelve-hour shift. There were twenty women like her who worked from 9 a.m. to 9 p.m. and were paid Rs 2,000 per month.
A high-speed machine would wind the thread on to cardboard spools. Their job was to replace the spool when it was full. Almost every week someone’s hair, saree, dupatta or fingers would get stuck between the spools or the threads. At least a dozen of them got stitches on their scalp when they were pulled into the machine.
After two years, the factory moved to Shahdara. Syeda only remembered that the factory owner was Punjabi. She switched factories so often that remembering the names of the owners was impossible. It was also considered rude to ask the names of the employers.
‘See, if they gave you job slips, we would know whom to ask for compensation,’ said Seema. She asked in the same breath, ‘Do you have a toilet at work?’ ‘No, the factory owners sometimes allowed us to use the toilet in their home but that depended on your caste and religion,’ replied Syeda.
She was never allowed to use the toilet at Ram Kumar’s because of his mother. ‘Some of them don’t even have a toilet at home,’ added Khushboo.
‘But they should have one when they employ so many people. That is mandatory,’ replied Seema.
They agreed with her but did not believe it was something worth fighting for. There was silence, and even smirks, for things that just seemed too fantastical and impossible.
This is an excerpt from ‘The Many Lives of Syeda X: The Story of an Unknown Indian’ published in 2024 (Juggernaut Books). Excerpted with permission from the author and publisher.
Neha Dixit is an independent journalist based out of Delhi. Her work focuses on the intersections of gender, politics, and social justice in South Asia. She has previously reported for The Caravan, Outlook, Al Jazeera, and The New York Times, among other outlets. Learn more about her work here.
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