Exhibition

The idea came from a conversation that did not begin as one about art. I had been working with women at the Bhalswa landfill for years — meeting them at the site, documenting their hours, trying to understand in policy language what their days actually looked like. When I finally went with a photographer, I did not need to plan the visit. I knew exactly where to take him. I knew which hours the light was worst, which corners smelled like burning plastic, which women would talk and which would not. ...

Overview The Indian economy runs, in significant part, on work that does not appear in GDP accounts, is excluded from labour force surveys, and is invisible to welfare administration. Home-based workers — embroiderers, bidi rollers, garment assemblers, papad makers — produce for global supply chains from their kitchen floors. Domestic workers — cooks, cleaners, caregivers — reproduce the conditions for every other kind of work. Together, they constitute an estimated 5–7 crore workers who are largely absent from formal count. ...