Breathless, workless

Delhi's construction workers are caught between toxic air and unemployment

- BY BADAR BASHIR

IN KALYAN PURI in east Delhi, just a few kilometres from the affluent Noida, a quiet crisis is unfolding. In these dense slums and skeletal structures, women sit in hopeless silence while their men move desperately from one contractor to another, searching for a day's work.

This is the human cost of the pollution lockdown. Since early November, when the Commission for Air Quality Management (CAQM) implemented the Graded Response Action Plan (GRAP), a majority of Delhi's construction labourers—both skilled and unskilled—have been out of work.