Why is the LPG crisis reviving pandemic fears among migrant workers?

Last week, Amazon India reported a surge in sales of ready-to-eat meals on its e-commerce platform. A spokesperson attributed this to customers' "reliance on instant food to cope with the current fuel uncertainty."

However, workers at the tech giant's warehouse in Manesar, Haryana, are finding it difficult to afford food. This industrial city, located south of Delhi, employs hundreds of migrant workers from Punjab, Rajasthan, Uttar Pradesh, and Bihar. 

As cooking gas cylinders run out, many are unable to cook in their rented homes and are instead turning to local dhabas. Eateries, facing the same gas shortage, have increased their prices.

“In dhabas near the warehouse, rotis, which used to cost Rs 8, are now being sold for Rs 12,” said Pawan Singh Sisodiya, general secretary of the Amazon India Workers Union. “If prices continue to rise at this rate, workers will be forced to go home.”

There have already been reports of migrant workers from the textile and ceramic industries in Gujarat fleeing. The gas shortage has forced some industrial units that rely on fuels such as LPG and LNG to shut down. In other cases, workers have decided to leave despite the availability of work, having to go without food for days.

In Delhi and surrounding areas, the shortage of LPG cylinders is rapidly exacerbating the cost of living for migrant workers, who typically do not have gas connections and rely on the black market.

 Labor supervisor Yash Dixit, who helps small manufacturers in Noida get cheap manpower, said, “Half the workers I know have returned home for this reason. They say at least they get food to eat when they are at home.”

Even those who have found cooking gas today use it sparingly. A 25-year-old worker at the Amazon warehouse in Manesar said he was not making rotis and curry every day as he used to. “Sometimes I eat Maggi [instant noodles] because it’s faster to prepare,” she explains.

Though he has to pay three times the regular price of gas, he still holds plans to return to Uttar Pradesh, his home state. “I had to survive somehow,” he said. “I’ve given this job four years so I’d rather wait some more time.”

On March 17, Sisodiya, the union leader, issued a press release urging Amazon to review wages because the gas crisis was “pushing workers towards hunger and severe financial distress”. The company has not acted on demand so far.

Social scientist Pushpendra Kumar, who has written extensively on the challenges faced by migrants, said the Covid-19 pandemic has clearly shown that migrants in India have the least “capacity to cope” with disasters, man-made or natural.

“Any honest government would have considered supplying rations and starting community kitchens at this time,” Kumar said. “But the government is invisible.”

The cost of cylinders, which used to be sold at Rs 1,200 till recently, has shot up to Rs 3,000-Rs 4,000 in and around Delhi. “Even those queuing up to buy gas at that price don’t get it sometimes,” Dixit, the labour supervisor in Noida who is himself a migrant from Shahjahanpur in Uttar Pradesh, complained.

Driven by the shortage in Noida, some workers Dixit knew had taken days off from work to go to their home towns and fetch gas cylinders. Others, he claimed, had resorted to burning firewood on the terrace of his building for preparing their meals.

But that is not an option for those working at Amazon’s warehouse in Manesar. Landlords in the area will not allow tenants to light fireworks, Sisodiya stressed. He also said it was difficult to find firewood in Manesar.

Goutam Majhi, who works at a Mahindra showroom in South Delhi and lives in a working-class neighborhood in Gautam Nagar, has switched to buying petrol by the kilo. Earlier, a worker from West Bengal bought a 14.2 kg cylinder from a black market for Rs 1,100. But now he has to shell out around Rs 300-Rs 400 per kilo.

Majhi refills his cylinder a few kilos of gas every week or so, hoping that the price will eventually come down. “I will not be able to save money this month,” he lamented.