Urban Affairs

Demands to launch an urban employment guarantee scheme similar to that of the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme has been gaining traction for a while. Kerala has been a front-runner in this regard by launching the Ayyankali Urban Employment Guarantee Scheme way back in 2010. At a time when the entire country is seeking an urban counterpart of the rural employment guarantee scheme, the potential and pitfalls of its urban version need to be looked into.

The labour of repair rooted in tutelage and kinship, and the loyalties and discontents that surround repair worlds regulate social order. They recast questions of interdependence and difference in cities. Kolkata’s cargo-cyclists and repair workers who assemble and maintain these old vehicles redeem the city from its disrepairs. Their location and lives are read against the history of capital, contemporary infrastructure building and the logistics of labour. While tutelage fulfils the promise of labour for those who were previously excluded from it, the kinship fostered in Kolkata’s repair worlds continues to keep workers at the margins of capital and profits.