The Power of Delhi's Purvanchali Vote

Roshan Kishore, Saurya Sengupta, Sanjeev K Jha, Nishant Ranjan and Abhishek Jha

- Roshan Kishore, Saurya Sengupta, Sanjeev K Jha, Nishant Ranjan and Abhishek Jha

A narrow metalled road slices Burari in vertical halves. All of two lanes wide, Sant Nagar Marg is a battleground, where cars, motorbikes, trucks, shops, and street vendors joust for every inch of space. Leaking sewage pipes and "work in progress" boards punctuate the potholed nightmare. Burari, on Delhi's northern fringe, has mushroomed around this avenue over the past 25 years - quickly, dramatically and haphazardly. Multi-storeyed malls sit beside police stations, which sit beside residential towers, which sit beside godowns.

"This road means a lot to us. When we moved here, it was just a single-lane muddy road," said Arvind Choudhary. The 52-year-old shifted to Delhi from a tiny village in Supaul district of Bihar as a teenager in the early 1980s in search of work. He found a job as a labourer in Azadpur Mandi, about 10km from Burari. Delhi's largest wholesale vegetable market, Azadpur Mandi, was the presumptive gateway to the Capital and prosperity for millions such as Choudhary who poured into the city from eastern Uttar Pradesh and Bihar between the 1980s and early 2000s.

But with opportunities came discrimination. "We were abused and a laughing stock for a very long time. I first worked at the market as a daily wage labourer, but my employer would routinely use slurs at me for being a Bihari," said Choudhary. Bound by migration, marginally homogenous cultural practices and shared experiences of discrimination, people such as Choudhary coalesced into a larger social group - Purvanchalis. They found work, mostly menial, in Azadpur, Jahangirpuri, Bhalswa and Swaroop Nagar, neighbouring colonies on Delhi's northern edge that were several kilometres away from the city's traditional commercial centres further south.