Contradictions at work: Navigating relational autonomy and caste in Delhi,India

Abstract

Ethnographic insights into people’s working lives can help us envision social policy to build dignified workspaces. This article explores the interlinkages between work and social protection, by drawing attention to two dimensions of pheriwale’s everyday working lives: first, how they relate to their work, and second, how they are situated within the Indian welfare context. Pheriwale are a group of traders in Delhi, India, who collect and sell secondhand/used-clothes. Like much of the Indian workforce, pheriwale’s work is classified as ‘informal’, since they remain outside social security tied to formal employment, they largely rely on irregular flow of income and primarily belong to the lower-caste groups. Low-income groups in India are entitled to various welfare schemes; however, accessing and receiving these welfare benefits may not always be consistent or dependable. In Delhi, pheriwale have been trading used/secondhand clothes for almost a century and they are one of the visibly women-dominated trading groups in the city. This article builds on four months of qualitative fieldwork at pheriwale’s marketplace in West Delhi, between 2017 and 2019. By following pheriwale’s work experiences through the conceptual lens of relational autonomy, this study highlights two key findings. First, due to the nature of self-employment, pheriwale shared how they have relative control of time and energy in their working routines. Second, in the face of an unreliable welfare state, pheriwale rely on building familial means of social protection to sustain lives.

Introduction

It is a chilly January morning in Delhi’s Raghubir Nagar. Meena and I sit comfortably in between massive piles of clothes while sipping piping hot chai, which we bought from the tea vendor who walks carefully through the narrow pathways amid mountains of used-clothes, with his large steaming tea cannister. Meena shares with me how it feels to have a metropolis as one’s ‘workplace’. She is in her early thirties and has been working as a pheriwali for the last decade. Pheriwale are used-clothes traders who visit various localities in and around Delhi, going from door-to-door to barter secondhand clothes in exchange for new kitchen utensils. Pheriwale are among several types of mobile traders, street vendors and informal recyclers, who are a vital part of the cityscape. They move along the streets and loudly announce information about their products or services, so residents know which trader is visiting that specific day. For example, the regular group of traders and service providers include the quilt-fixers, who revive and fluff up the cotton inside the thick winter quilts; the ear-cleaners; the kabadiwale, who exchange cardboard, newspapers and plastic for cash; knife-sharpening service providers; and street vendors selling ornaments, vegetables, popcorn, peanuts, plates and cups.

While some pheriwale visit the residential neighbourhoods of the city on their own, Meena says, that she prefers to go along with other traders. ‘Three-four of us go together, so the cost of the autorickshaw can be shared. When we reach a location, we spread out, [barter the utensils] collect the clothes, and then we decide a meeting point and return together [. . .]’. The following day Meena and her peers bring the clothes to the mandi, which is an open bazaar/market in Raghubir Nagar, and sell the clothes, that then generates their income. Meena explains that being a mobile trader in Delhi is laborious due to the scale of the city. Most of the city’s population, up to 80%, are directly or indirectly employed in the informal economy (Raveendran and Vanek, 2020). ¹ According to economist S. Sundari, structural changes in the Indian economy over the past decades, has pushed more women into the non-agricultural informal economy (Sundari, 2020; see also Dubey, 2016; John and Gopal, 2021). Around 90% of working women in India earn their livelihood through informal work (Chakraborty and Chaudhary, 2019; Sundari, 2020). Pheriwale are among some of the visibly women-dominated trading groups in Delhi.

Transnational supply chains heavily depend on informal networks of traders for local provision of vegetables, street food, water and a large variety of everyday consumable goods (Crang et al., 2013; International Labour Organization (ILO), 2020). Anthropologist Lucy Norris, in her study on the secondhand clothing industry in India, notes that tracing the flow of used-clothes is incredibly challenging due to the complex web of supply chains that span across the globe. It is also difficult to map the channels through which new and used-clothes enter and exit informal and formal processes of production and exchange (cf. Crang et al., 2013). For instance, Delhi is a major centre for the supply of raw materials for the global rag industry, particularly rags and cleaning cloth utilised to clean factory machinery. Norris highlights that pheriwale become key actors in the global supply chains of rags by playing a central role in circulating massive amounts of used-clothes (Norris, 2010).

Despite the centrality of informal networks of traders and service providers, the vast complexities and heterogeneity of informal work remains understudied and misunderstood (Chen and Carré, 2020). Informal work is not often associated with terms such as ‘decent work’ or dignity and instead, it is assumed that it is primarily (if not exclusively) a ‘survival strategy’ (Cooper and May, 2007: 88). One of the major blind spots within the scholarship on the informal economy, are the accounts of how workers relate to their work. Many aspects of their working lives continue to be taken for granted (De Neve, 2005; Harriss-White, 2017; Hill, 2010; Leonard, 1998; Millar, 2014). For example, one assumption is that informally employed workers in India engage in their respective trade solely due to kinship and caste ties (De Neve, 2005). It is also presumed that workers are only bound within the informal economy due to the inaccessibility of formal employment and lack of viable alternatives for low-waged workers (Leonard, 1998). While these factors are important to consider, it is also vital to explore the heterogeneity of work, motivations and routines which can further provide us with a more nuanced understanding of work in the 21st century (cf. Plomien and Schwartz, 2023).

Thus, this article examines the interlinkages between work and welfare, by focusing on pheriwale’s everyday experiences. By highlighting the everyday dynamics at work through the lens of relational autonomy, I build on and contribute to scholarship on informal economy to strengthen and deepen the conceptualisations of work, and what it means to people within varying contexts of precarity (Millar, 2014, 2018). Furthermore, I elucidate how pheriwale navigate precarity and build means of social protection for themselves and their community.

The section below begins with a description of pheriwale’s everyday work and presents the methodological aspects of this study. The article then explores the complexity of pheriwale’s trade wherein anxieties are intertwined with notions of autonomy. The concept of relational autonomy is situated and theorised through the gender and caste dynamics of the Indian economy. The following section addresses how workers in the informal economy remain outside social protection mechanisms tied to formal work. Yet they may be entitled to various formal mechanisms of public welfare, such as subsidised food, healthcare, education, widow’s pension, pension for the elderly, cooking gas, monthly compensation for disabled people, among others (Ahuja, 2020). Here I specifically note the policies mentioned by pheriwale. However, both the accessibility and finally receiving the benefits can be challenging (Agarwala, 2006; Auyero, 2012; Gupta, 2012; Mulinari, 2021). How pheriwale build networks of social protection for themselves and their families is illustrated in the last section.

Conversations at work

Delhi is a major hub for cloth markets and remains an important centre for India’s large garment industry. Thus, it is a prime location for pheriwale and attracts traders and fabric resellers from neighbouring towns, cities and villages. Raghubir Nagar, where I conducted fieldwork, is in West Delhi and is one of the biggest secondhand cloth markets (mandi) in the city. Pheriwale have been involved in the city’s secondhand clothing markets, for more than a century (Norris, 2010). This trade is mostly carried out by the Waghri caste, which is a lower-caste group from Gujarat, ² the western-most state in India (Bapat, 2018). Here I use ‘pheriwale’, since that is how the research participants in this study called themselves. ‘Pheri’ in Hindi is used by traders who visit door-to-door and sell goods and ‘wale’ is a common suffix denoting people associated with a particular trade. While there are similar groups who work with used-clothes in other parts of India (see Bapat, 2018, who followed the traders in Mumbai), this article focuses upon the group in Delhi.

Pheriwale’s work cycle, can be visualised in three steps: first, they buy utensils from shops (which are numerous in Raghubir Nagar). In Hindi the term for utensils is ‘bartan’, hence these traders are also colloquially called ‘bartanwale’ in Delhi. The second activity is pheri, where they take those utensils in a cloth bundle and visit residential parts of the city to barter. They may visit one to two neighbourhoods in a day (depending on the distance), going from street-to-street announcing their presence. If a resident would like to barter their used-clothes in exchange for new kitchen utensils, they invite the pheriwale and the economic negotiations take place (see Norris, 2010: 130–132 for an example of a ‘doorstep exchange’). Thus, pheriwale offer a door-to-door service which enables householders to get rid of their used-clothes in exchange for new kitchen utensils. In the third step, pheriwale bring all the collected used-clothes to the mandi the next morning. Some pheriwale, may go for pheri several times in a week, whereas others may designate few days for pheri and other days for selling at the mandi. Depending on several factors, pheriwale can have different working routines. For example, the pheriwale who live in and around Raghubir Nagar tend to visit the marketplace daily to sell their collected goods (apart from Sunday when the mandi is closed). Pheriwale who live far from the mandi, such as in the outskirts of the city or in other towns/villages, may only visit the marketplace two to four times in a month.

An average working day for pheriwale starts early in the morning at around 4 a.m., when the traders take all the collected used-goods to the open-market/mandi. While the used-clothes are the main selling items, other prominent used-goods include secondhand electronics, shoes, sneakers, clocks, watches, mobile phones and so on. Roughly around late-morning to mid-day many traders may return home for lunch or buy lunch at the mandi. Later, if the pheriwale have to go for pheri, they may buy the utensils and continue their workday by visiting different parts of the city. Then the whole work-cycle starts again.

The buyers at the mandi can be classified into three broad categories: first, the urban poor who buy consumable used-clothes for cheap prices, second, the workers from export factories buy massive quantities of used-clothes which can be disintegrated and provide raw material for export manufacturing, and third, the street vendors who buy and fix the used-clothes and sell them forward at various local and regional markets. Women are visibly more present at the mandi and as mobile traders on the streets of the city, though men are also involved in the trade. Therefore, most of my research participants were women. In this article, I draw upon interviews and observations which I conducted during my doctoral study where I utilised qualitative methods inspired by ethnographic fieldwork. I conducted four months of fieldwork between 2017 and 2019 at pheriwale’s mandi in Raghubir Nagar in West Delhi. Overall, I interviewed 28 pheriwale and collected observation notes (25 women and 3 men). In this article, I specifically include excerpts from the interviews which explicitly mention or denote ‘relation to work’ and ‘welfare schemes/benefits’.

All the interactions were in Hindi and the translation of all the excerpts to English are my own. As I was born and raised in Delhi and have extensively travelled and lived in many parts of the city for most of my life, I was comfortable with the city, the language and had prior knowledge of pheriwale’s trade. All the research participants were provided information about my research, they were asked for consent before any conversation and were informed that they could leave the interview/conversation at any point. All participants are anonymised and have been given pseudonyms. During the four months of fieldwork, I visited the mandi often, spent hours sitting around in the open-market and had lunch with some of the key research participants regularly.

Contradictions at work

Like most street traders, there are specific uncertainties encompassed within the nature of pheriwale’s trade which include extensive hours of physical labour, exposure to outdoor factors such as pollution, extreme heat and an irregular flow of income (Bhowmik, 2010). For example, since the mandi opens early in the morning, many pheriwale noted that they did not get proper time to sleep and complained of bodily strain. On top of long and arduous income generating activities, such as collecting, sorting and carrying clothes and utensils, pheriwale women also have to perform all the unpaid household activities including care responsibilities.

One late-morning, Rahul (mid-twenties) maps out his ideal ‘good business day’ for me. The overhead costs in the trade include buying kitchen utensils (approx. INR 700–800), travel costs (approx. INR 200–300), entry fees to get a selling-spot at the mandi (approx. INR 10–40) and food and water during the hours spent at the mandi and pheri (approx. INR 100). Other monthly expenses include housing, groceries and additional ad hoc costs such as childcare, elderly care or medicines. Whatever amount is left after all the necessary trade overheads and other monthly expenditure make up the savings. The amount of savings depended on one’s familial obligations and number of dependants or age and health of the trader. For example, Rahul who did not have children in 2019, ‘good business days’ meant being able to save INR 100–200 per day. Rahul pointed out that he prefers to go for pheri every day, which enabled him to consistently support his elders and save a bit for himself.

When the flow of business is low, that is, when the pheriwale are unable to collect a minimum amount of used-clothes, sustaining livelihoods become challenging. For example, Ritu (mid-thirties) and her husband, visit different localities to cover more space and get more clothes. Ritu explains that they share their household expenses, her husband pays the rent and she pays for groceries, clothes and so on. Pheriwale’s trade takes the heaviest hit during the Delhi-summers, Ritu says that ‘in the summer, people in big houses rest under coolers and take naps. Even if we shout, they cannot hear us [and they also get angry]. People have asked me, “why are you disturbing us?” [. . .] summers are the worst. I feel like begging!’

During one of my regular visits to the mandi, I find Krishna (late-fifties) and Keertan (late-thirties) sitting with their pile of clothes. Krishna sits with a bandaged foot and explains to me that she got hurt while getting down from the bus, so she has had to cut down on her working hours. One of the health-safety concerns which directly affects pheriwale are injuries due to carrying heavy loads of used-clothes and utensils while travelling through the city. Krishna’s ailing foot is a marker of a work-related injury. Pheriwale in their late-fifties and above, like Sadna, Vaneeta, Pushpa, Tina and Aakash, often mentioned that they had aches in their shoulders and backs due to carrying heavy goods. Even younger pheriwale who are in their twenties and thirties, like Keertan, Sita, Rahul, Rohan, Jyoti and Jeena, mention that they experienced shoulder, back and neck pain regularly. Along with such daily struggles, many pheriwale also noted that they associate the trade with having a sense of control over time and their income, due to the lack of employers/bosses. One morning, I met with Vaneeta (mid-sixties) and Pushpa (mid-fifties). They explained how pheriwale’s workday could be organised according to one’s needs, depending on the demands of one’s finances or family circumstances.

Pushpa:

‘We are our own bosses. Whenever we want we can go for pheri; when we do not, then we don’t go. We are not slaves to anyone [Kisi ki gulaami nahi karte]!’

Vaneeta:

‘We don’t serve anyone [gulaami]. We work hard, earn our own living, eat our own food’.

Pushpa and Vaneeta, who have been traders for the past several decades, note that an important aspect of this trade is that they do not have to work for anyone. The term gulaami means ‘servitude’ in Hindi and Urdu. Both Pushpa and Vaneeta use this term to indicate that they do not have a boss or an employer. On another level, such statements also mark that they do not belong to caste groups who work in other people’s houses as domestic workers or cleaners (cf. Torgalkar, 2017). One of the alternative informal jobs available in the city, often referred to by pheriwale women, is paid domestic work. As they are situated in Delhi, paid domestic labour in lower-middle/middle/upper-middle/upper-class households, is a major source of employment for many low-income groups, especially women (Grover, 2018; Raghuram, 2001; Sarkar, 2016). On the one hand, their association of working for an employer, or having a boss, with servitude is indicative of the structures of work where workers have less or almost no control over time, nature of work or tasks. On the other hand, the intersections of caste and gender also significantly shape how pheriwale’s work is embedded in the Indian socio-economy, which I revisit in the next section.

These contradictory characteristics of pheriwale’s work, such as – the uncertain flow of income or the physically demanding nature of being a mobile trader, while simultaneously invoking a feeling of having control of one’s work routine within an oppressive caste-based society – can be captured by the feminist conceptualisation of ‘relational autonomy’. ‘Relational autonomy’ accounts for the social relations and the complexities of living in a gendered, caste- and class-based world where people are not outside the social (Mackenzie, 2019).

In her study on catadores (waste pickers) in Brazil, anthropologist Kathleen Millar (2014: 35, see also Millar 2018) suggests that ‘relational autonomy’ can explore ‘how a relative degree of control over work activities and time enables catadores to sustain relationships, fulfil social obligations and pursue life projects in an uncertain everyday’. Such an understanding of autonomy sheds light on the intertwining aspects of freedom and constraints that workers may experience in their everyday. The contradictory relations that pheriwale express about their work are also resonated among other low-income, self-employed workers, such as street vendors and waste pickers (cf. Hill, 2010; Millar, 2008, 2014; Vargas, 2016). Their narratives reflect the ambiguities, of having stressful work routines while experiencing relative forms of autonomy due to the lack of bosses or supervisors. In Millar’s study, for example, catadores often reflect that the lack of supervisors and bosses enabled them to have more control over their time, control the energies that they put into their working day and keep all the earnings without having to deal with middle-persons (Millar, 2008). Many catadores who found jobs outside the garbage dumps, with semi-/formal contracts, tended to return to the dumps due to worse work environments. One such participant in Millar’s study notes, ‘The boss treated me poorly. I couldn’t miss a day, not even if I was sick’ (Millar, 2008: 27). Another participant, a 70-year-old woman who had worked at the dump yard for 50 years, states, ‘Freedom, right? I don’t like to be ordered around and I also don’t like to order others around. I like to collect’ (Millar, 2008: 27).

Collecting recyclables from the dump yard is conditioned by precarity, danger of being exposed to hazardous substances, yet the lack of controlling and disciplining bosses emerges as a major factor for catadores to remain and return to waste collection. As Millar notes,

Unlike most members of the formal working class, catadores are in a position to determine the schedule, pace and intensity of their work. Furthermore, since catadores work in the absence of any supervisor, manager or boss, and therefore are not subjected to disciplinary practices that arise in conjunction with capitalist wage labor [. . .]. Many catadores value these characteristics of their labor, often appealing the conditions on the dump as a reason for working in Jardim das Flores’ [one of the waste dump areas in Rio de Janeiro]. (Millar, 2008: 27)

This is also reflected upon by Vaneeta and Pushpa. Since they do not have bosses or supervisors, they can take days off in times of illness or when there is a family emergency. They do not have to go for pheri every day and can decide the pace of their work.

For Millar such narratives illustrate the value of relational autonomy for low-income workers in the informal economy, who are in highly precarious and physically unsafe work environments and do not have employment with social security (Millar, 2008). Millar critically engages with economist Guy Standing’s notion of precarious work (Standing, 2011). Standing argues that flexibility of neoliberal waged labour instils ‘anger, anomie, anxiety and alienation’, whereas for Millar the highly precarious nature of self-employment is a ‘politics of detachment’ from contractual work which results in some form of ‘relational autonomy’ in self-employment (Millar, 2014: 49). Here relational autonomy in low-income, self-employed work is not contextualised to argue that self-employment is itself ‘autonomous’ in a neoliberal sense or to associate informal economic actors as ‘innovative capitalist entrepreneurs’ (cf. de Soto, 1989). Rather, it is to draw attention to the contradictions within work environments that are engrained within everyday working lives (Millar, 2014). For pheriwale, the everyday experiences of having more control over time and energy at work cannot be understood outside the intersections of gender, caste and class hierarchies, which I untangle in the next section.

Caste, gender and class at work

Like Pushpa and Vaneeta, Krishna and Keertan also state that they would never want to work as domestic workers. Krishna explains her working week: ‘In a week I go for two to four days for pheri, then two to three days I can be home. I go when my mind feels like [Mann-moji hai] there’s no coercion [zabardasti]. Like if one gets a job somewhere, then one has to go’. She also adds that her community does not engage in paid domestic labour, such as a cleaning someone’s house. Within the Indian socio-economic context, such statements point to various entanglements. First, because working for someone else, especially the upper/middle-classes and upper/middle-castes, could be coercive (zabardasti) meaning that it may entail discriminatory exploitation. On the other hand, when Krishna states that she would not work in people’s homes it is also indicative that her community does not engage in this type of work: hence, she is also invoking prevalent caste divisions. This implies that people who do paid domestic labour belong to other caste groups. Here, hierarchies of class and caste are both experienced and reproduced. Caste is at work not only in terms of structural division of labour within the economy but is an intersecting process that is reproduced and ongoing in everyday life as well.

Krishna, along with Pushpa and Vaneeta, also associates working for someone or being answerable to an employer with the term zabardasti or ‘coercion’. Work environments present highly unequal structures, especially for pheriwale, belonging to lower-caste and class groups. The inequality of structures is not only materialised through low incomes or deplorable working conditions, but also from ‘coercive’ environments of discrimination. In the Indian context, narratives of workers and their relation to work illustrate how caste and gender seep into the fractures of 21st century work environments (Harriss-White, 2017). The fact that pheriwale women primarily mention paid domestic labour as a possible, though as an undesirable alternative, is itself a marker of one of the only available job possibilities for most women in the urban economy. Therefore, paid and unpaid work is shaped by caste-based and gendered divisions of labour, which are further sedimented and facilitated within the liberalised capitalist Indian economy (De Neve, 2005; Harriss-White, 2003).

Jeena (late-twenties), tells me in detail of the various employment opportunities that may be available to her in the urban and rural Indian labour markets. When I ask Jeena whether she would like to take up another kind of job, she says:

There are so many types of jobs. There is manual labour: ironing clothes, construction, brickwork. [. . .] One can work in mansions, clean and wash in offices. But then they scold and shout, [and they] do not give money on time, so we have to beg or plead. What’s the point? Then, the soul hurts. Because you work hard, and if you do not do something according to their timetable, then they stop answering, or refuse to give wages; they do not show empathy or humanity [. . .] In Gujarat, near my hometown there is agriculture, to sow, grow, put water; there is a lot of work there as well. Massive amount of work for a few months [. . .]. But here, I can pay the rent and monthly costs. No matter how much you earn, it all goes in rent and costs [. . .]

The sense of being ‘slaves’ to employers or facing coercive work environments is illustrated by Jeena. While older pheriwale relate to pheri mostly through a generational and caste-based relation to the trade as the primary mode of livelihood, the younger generation of the Waghris in Delhi may have found alternative livelihoods in the urban labour market. While Jeena provides many examples of jobs that she may see herself doing, she is also explicit in noting that other types of work – such as cleaning, farming, construction, ironing clothes – also include intense physical labour like the pheriwale’s trade. In addition, Jeena adds how agricultural work, especially for farm workers implies intense seasonal work for low remuneration (see Blau, 2024).

Apart from the physically exhausting aspects, everyday hierarchies also shape how workers relate to their work. Jeena is very forthcoming in sharing how working for someone else, as an employee within unfavourable conditions, leads to extreme distress. Jeena’s work-life account is both explicitly and implicitly alluding to discrimination which is intricately intertwined in the intersections of gender, caste and class. These intersections reproduce the conditions that allow for the perpetuation of a lack of recognition of labour done by lower-castes, low-income workers and women (Dubey, 2016). Such narratives are not unique to pheriwale and are resonated in other studies which revolve around experiences of lower-caste groups and work.

Barbara Harriss-White’s (2017) study explores the working lives of waste pickers in the southern Indian state of Tamil Nadu. Within the waste industry, workers are overwhelmingly from the lowest-caste groups. Harriss-White juxtaposes various narratives of waste pickers and cleaners, some who are employed by companies that do waste management and other workers who are informally self-employed. Many of the jobs in waste management firms are subcontracted and the employer company does not include the social security benefits that were traditionally part of job contracts, for example, employment state insurance, pensions and so on. This results in a marginal difference between the wages earned by contractual workers and the self-employed waste pickers. Furthermore, since the contractual workers face the constant threat of being laid-off with short notice, having a contract may not necessarily provide a reliable means of income (Harriss-White, 2017).

Another key finding in Harriss-White’s (2017) study is that as jobs get more formalised, including subcontracted work, they become more male-dominated. This implies that for lower-caste women, access to contractual, formal and semi-formal job sites remain limited. Even under the widespread public policies that are targeted to tackle irregular employment, under-employment and unemployment in India, such as the Employment Guarantee Scheme (EGS), women are underrepresented and continue to find regulated employment inaccessible (Kabeer, 2008). Recent reports suggest that women’s participation in accessing state-initiated employment has increased due to policies such as the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (MGNREGA), which is an employment-guarantee scheme designed for rural areas. However, the participation of lower-caste groups remains low (Swain and Sharma, 2015).

For the younger pheriwale, it seems that the number of viable jobs may be more in comparison to the previous generations. However, Jeena’s comments also resonate with Harriss-White’s study, wherein subcontracted, semi-formal or agricultural work may not be more secure nor have better work conditions, while being self-employed may entail more control over one’s income, even in the face of more precarity (Harriss-White, 2017; Millar, 2014). Therefore, pheriwale’s continued generational engagement within the used-clothes trade, despite the mentally and physically exhaustive work, is not only a marker of the caste practices within the trade. Rather, it is indicative of the prevailing dominance of the gendered and caste divisions embedded in the labour market.

Formalised welfare, informalised work?

Like most other workers in India’s informal economy, the relationship between work and welfare is materialised (mostly) through its absence. The Indian welfare system spans a wide range of public services and measures for social protection (Ahuja, 2020; Gupta, 2012; Kapur and Nangia, 2015). These welfare mechanisms operate at and are implemented by the central, state and municipal/local governments, depending on the scale of the provision. While everyone is entitled to services such as public hospitals, schools, universities, subsidised cooking fuel and so on. There are certain social protection mechanisms assured by formal employment such as Employees’ State Insurance (ESI), Provident Fund (PF), maternity benefit, sick leave, vacation and rights such as the right to clean and safe workspace, among others (Srinivasiah and Santosh, 2024). Historian, Ravi Ahuja points out, that throughout the history of welfare in India, public policies have been devised to encourage employers to address ‘issues of social reproduction by provisioning for housing, créches, educational facilities, subsidized grain shops, credit or dispensaries’ (Ahuja, 2020: 166).

However, the social security benefits tied to employment have only been available for a small minority of workers in India, since a large majority of the workforce earn their livelihoods in the informal economy, which remains outside these policies (Ahuja, 2020). The informal-formal differentiations within the Indian economy are not only conditional to the presence of job contracts with social protection embedded in them. The ongoing trend is that even formal establishments may employ people through informalised relations, meaning that the worker maybe hired by a formal employer but does not receive any of the social security benefits tied to employment (Harriss-White, 2017; Mezzadri, 2020). Despite decades of poverty alleviation programmes and a multiplicity of welfare schemes for low-income groups, it was only in 2008 that the law makers passed a policy which addresses the working conditions of almost 90% of the Indian workforce, under The Unorganised Workers Social Security Act (USWSSA, 2008). The USWSSA ³ passed in 2008, seeks to target ‘the unorganised worker’ which includes ‘a home-based worker, self-employed worker or a wage worker in the unorganised sector and includes a worker in the organised sector who is not covered by any’ social security measures through employment such as insurance, provident fund and maternity benefits (USWSSA, 2008: 2). The government plans to develop welfare policies for workers in the informal economy on issues of health, maternity benefits, schemes for the elderly and other issues that may be deemed necessary from time-to-time (USWSSA, 2008: 2–3). Pheriwale would technically fall under the classification of ‘self-employed workers’ within the unorganised/informal economy. In this section, however, I focus on the policies mentioned by pheriwale.

One of the initiatives often talked about among pheriwale, was the Aadhaar card, the biometric national identity card with a unique identity number, to which all residents of India are entitled to (Chaudhuri and König, 2018; Rao and Nair, 2019). For example, Jyoti (mid-thirties) mentioned how she spent a day in the queue to get her Aadhaar card for herself and her children. Aadhaar card is now linked to many aspects of everyday life, such as bank accounts, mobile number, other ID cards and becomes necessary to access any welfare benefit (Bhatia et al., 2020). Sita (late-thirties) noted that the Aadhaar card was crucial for her children to access local public schools (cf. Rao, 2019).

Among the pheriwale who were above the age of 60, applying for pensions was a recurrent theme. Sadna (mid-sixties) and her friend, who is 70-plus years of age, had struggled to get their pensions for months and navigating the municipal offices to arrange their pensions had been extremely exhausting (Raphael, 2022). Similarly, Sita had to face many challenges while applying for her widow’s pension, after the demise of her husband. These challenges included travelling long distances to arrange the required documents, visiting municipal offices multiple times and enduring long waiting periods. The struggles involved in applying for various policies such as ID cards, pensions, micro-loans from public banks, was a recurrent theme in the accounts of the pheriwale (cf. Auyero, 2012; Gupta, 2012).

This arbitrariness of whether a welfare benefit would arrive also frames the precarity for workers in the informal economy. Moreover, public social security such as pensions and maternity benefits are least accessible to lower-caste women due to structural constraints. For example, despite multiple policies to make education accessible, its inaccessibility for lower-caste and lower-class groups, especially for women, has been a characteristic of the developing and modernising India (Gupta, 2012; Harriss-White, 2017; Kabeer, 2008; Noronha and D’Cruz, 2017). Thus, a common reflection among most pheriwale was that even though there were many welfare policies and schemes which could be potentially accessible through their Aadhaar cards, however, relying on them was not feasible. While Sita and Sadna mentioned that pension would provide them with some economic relief, they could not however completely depend on them. The unreliability of such welfare schemes occurred at various stages, for example, it was unsure if one could get a steady flow of pensions after the application and the amount would not fully cover their living expenses (Raphael, 2022). Therefore, in the Indian context, precarity of work and life in general is not only market-driven in terms of flexibility, but it is ‘precariousness induced by a state’ as well (Polese, 2018: viii).

Structures of social support

The gender-blindedness of welfare policies and lack of support for low-income women is illustrated through the severe lack of childcare infrastructure such as kindergartens or day cares for families that depend on street vending or waste picking. Pheriwale women often shared that reproductive work and care-giving activities was a major part of their daily routines. Childcare responsibilities often overlap with everyday trading routines and the division between home and work is blurred, as many children come along with their parents to the mandi. For pheriwale women, the flexibility of the trade also enables them to manage the childcare responsibilities and shift the hours and days of work depending on the requirements of their household and family members. Since they have relative control over their time and workspace, mothers who have young children often bring them to the marketplace and take care of them during their working hours. Therefore, despite the precarity that shapes the lives of pheriwale, their primary reliance on the trade reveals how being self-employed and having more autonomy in their work routines can cater to the varying demands in a household, especially for women. Pheriwale women also shared how this trade has enabled them to build livelihoods for themselves and for their families.

As Krishna and Keertan highlighted, for a majority of the pheriwale, trading used-clothes was the primary mode of livelihood. Some pheriwale, such as Sita (late-thirties), who is the single-earner in her household and has four children, takes up other jobs from time to time. Due to the decline of business in the summer months, it is a period of dwindling incomes. During summers, Sita takes her children to her hometown, a village outside Ahmedabad, Gujarat. Her annual trips to the village allow her to meet with her extended family and help her elders. She takes up construction work in the village and the surrounding areas. She says, ‘Construction work is a lot of work [that is, physically exhausting] but [it] pays well’, which enables her to save a little bit and support her family in the village. When summer is over, she returns to Delhi and continues with the pheriwale’s trade. As Sita is not working for someone, she can pick up construction work during months when she is unable to go for pheri. Taking up seasonal work in Gujarat, due to the decline of incomes during Delhi summers, exposes the precarious nature of informal self-employment (cf. Agarwala, 2013; Breman, 2013). Yet, this also shows how Sita finds ways to support her immediate and extended families. As social-anthropologist Minh Nguyen highlights in the context of Vietnam’s Spring District’s and Hanoi’s waste economy and waste traders, informal work in urban and semi-urban recycling spaces offers ways to fulfil desires and some form of socio-economic mobility (Nguyen, 2019).

Sadna (mid-sixties) explains how she finds pride in this trade: ‘Earlier, I used to go for pheri often. I worked hard [. . .] I had so much energy. My husband left 19 years ago [. . .] But after that I arranged weddings for four sons and two daughters’. The plot of land where Sadna and her children live currently was bought from her savings. Later her children and their spouses expanded the house built on it by working as pheriwale; so, for Sadna, the trade has been central for her family to build their livelihoods. Older pheriwale, who have engaged in this trade for decades, often shared accounts of saving up, arranging children’s weddings, buying small plots of land and building livelihoods for their families with pride. Sadna, also shares that she was able to save more money when she was younger. Due to ageing and illness, she has had to cut down on the number of hours she works per week. Though, she has an extensive work experience of more than four decades, which have enabled her to acquire some long-standing steady clientele. She visits these clients, known as ‘garag’ (households) regularly, and goes on pheri only a few days a month. Even though she is unable to go for pheri every day, Sadna is ensured a minimum steady supply of used-clothes. This allows her to save a little amount of money (up to INR 1000–1200) every month for her high blood pressure and diabetes medication. Periods when she is unable to secure this amount, she has to rely on her youngest son, who helps her with her medicines.

Sadna notes that she is not thrilled that her children aspire for other types of work; whereas Anita, (mid-forties), shares that she would like her children to get out of the trade due to the physically and mentally exhausting nature of it. When I met Anita, she was saving for her son, so he could buy an autorickshaw and arrange training for him to become an autorickshaw driver. As parents, Sita, Sadna, Anita and Krishna shared various kinds of aspirations that they have for their children. Though, a common thread that connects all the narratives is the understanding that pheriwale are building livelihoods not only for themselves but also for their immediate and extensive families. While asset ownership or savings may be economically viable for only some pheriwale, other forms of social support included teaching relatives and friends about the trade. Poonam had only been in Delhi for about three months, when I met her. Prior to this, she used to do agricultural work in Gujarat. Due to lack of rains, recurring bad yields and after losing her husband, depending on farming for a livelihood had proved extremely challenging. So Poonam decided to move to Delhi with her children and learn the nuances of pheriwale’s trade from her relative. Through such support, the traders also build a network of sharing skills which include knowledge of trading used-clothes and utensils, insights on how to navigate the city and learning the specificities of the used-goods markets. Pheriwale women, thus, create structures of social support not only through everyday caring responsibilities but also providing varying degrees of social security and skills to their community networks.

For pheriwale, especially women, building up savings to take care of family members or investing in assets such as homes or autorickshaws for children is a major shift within a context of the gendered nature of the income and wealth gap in India ⁴ (Bharti, 2018; Tandon, 2018). For instance, a study from April 2020 on women owning land in India shows that upper-caste women are more likely to own land as compared to lower-caste women (cf. Agarwal et al., 2020). This illustrates how gender, class and caste interweave in complex ways in terms of access to assets and resources. Thus, when the state fails to provide structures of welfare, workers in the informal economy are forced to build their own mechanisms of social protection (Auyero, 2012; De Neve, 2005; Gupta, 2012). However, provision of public services and welfare are vital for low-income workers since the familial structures of social protection are extremely vulnerable to economic volatility, such as the economic crisis caused by the pandemic (see Nguyen et al., 2024). Welfare measures can provide economic aid and ease the burden for workers, such as pensions for the elderly or people with disabilities can provide relief for those who may not have the physical capacity to engage in persistent manual labour.

Concluding reflections

In this article, the main aim has been to capture the complex intricacies of work and welfare and how people navigate these two while working in India’s informal economy. By drawing attention to the experiences of pheriwale, the everyday contradictions of work become visible. Work emerges through paradoxes which invoke relational autonomy, having relative control over time, activities, energies as well as not being subjected to disciplinary or discriminatory bosses/employers. At the same time, the physically exhausting nature of the trade also means being exposed to physical injuries and factors which impact on their incomes thus highlighting everyday precarity. Pheriwale’s experiences reveal how they approach available welfare schemes while working without any social protection mechanisms. For pheriwale, care work encompasses securing savings, investing in assets, applying for welfare schemes (when possible), building supportive community networks to sustain livelihoods within a context of an unreliable welfare system.

This article points out that examining the nuances of low-income sites of work can deepen our understandings of the vast heterogeneity of experiences within the 21st century work environments. Therefore, to devise social policies for workers in the informal economy, it is crucial to account for the intersectional hierarchies which shape the everyday working lives. Along with concerns of the material and economic value of work, it is important to consider what workers value in their work to envision humanising work environments and to make workspaces more equal and dignified.