Heat, High Rents and Costly Commutes Squeeze India’s Urban Workers

NEW DELHI: Before sunrise, domestic worker Sunita Devi leaves her rented room in Sangam Vihar and begins a journey involving an e-rickshaw, a bus and a long walk to reach the homes where she works in south Delhi.

Her commute, rent and groceries now consume most of the family income, turning India’s headline economic growth into a daily calculation over which expense can be postponed.

Key points

- Workers interviewed across south and south-east Delhi said rent, food and transport were rising faster than their earnings.

- Long commutes from cheaper peripheral neighbourhoods are adding to household costs and reducing time available for care work and rest.

- Informal workers remain especially exposed to illness, extreme heat, job loss and sudden expenses because paid leave and social security are limited.

- Free or subsidised foodgrain and public services provide crucial relief, but access can be uneven for migrants and tenants with documents linked elsewhere.

- Economists say strong national growth can coexist with household distress when wage gains and secure employment do not keep pace with living costs.

At a bus stop near Chirag Delhi, Devi said her monthly household budget had become steadily harder to balance.

Her family pays rent for a compact room, buys cooking fuel and vegetables, and sends money to relatives in Uttar Pradesh.

School-related expenses for her children arrive throughout the year, even where tuition is free.

“Work has increased, but the money left at the end of the month has reduced,” said Devi, who is paid separately by several households. “If one employer travels or cuts a day, I lose that income. The rent does not wait.”

Her experience reflects a broader divide in India’s cities.

Employment opportunities are concentrated in commercial and affluent residential districts, while workers providing security, cleaning, delivery, construction, driving and care services increasingly live in distant, lower-cost settlements.

The result is a transfer of both money and time from low-income households to the daily commute.

The Delhi Metro has expanded reliable mobility across the National Capital Region, while city buses remain indispensable for shorter trips.

Yet even modest fares add up for a worker making several connections a day.

Travellers who cannot afford the fastest route often choose longer combinations of walking, shared vehicles and buses.

Near Okhla, delivery rider Mohammad Arif said fuel, repairs and mobile-data expenses had to be deducted before he could assess his actual earnings.

Incentive-based pay also made each day unpredictable.

“The application shows a total, but that is not what reaches the household,” Arif said. “Petrol, servicing and food outside all come from us.

If the bike breaks down, income stops and the repair bill starts.”

Platform workers occupy a rapidly growing but weakly protected segment of India’s labour market.

Their flexibility is valuable to consumers and businesses, but workers say opaque incentive changes, unpaid waiting time and pressure to complete orders quickly shift commercial risks on to them.

The Union government’s e-Shram portal was designed to build a national database of unorganised workers, while the Code on Social Security, 2020, formally recognised gig and platform workers as categories for welfare schemes.

Implementation, funding and portable benefits, however, remain central concerns for labour groups.

A senior Delhi labour department official, speaking in an official capacity but requesting that the discussion not be treated as a scheme announcement, said registration alone could not replace enforceable benefits.

“The policy challenge is to connect verified workers with actual protection — health cover, accident support, pensions and grievance mechanisms,” the official said. “Portability is essential because labour mobility does not follow state boundaries.”

Food remains another pressure point.

India’s retail inflation is measured through the Consumer Price Index released by the Ministry of Statistics and Programme Implementation.

Headline inflation can ease while particular essentials — vegetables, pulses, edible oil, milk or spices — rise sharply because of weather, supply disruptions and global commodity movements.

At a neighbourhood market in Govindpuri, shoppers compared prices across stalls and bought smaller quantities of vegetables.

Vendors said customers increasingly asked for half-kilogram or quarter-kilogram portions rather than shopping for several days.

“People do not stop buying food, but they change what they buy,” said Rakesh Kumar, a vegetable vendor. “When tomatoes or onions become costly, families reduce the quantity.

My transport and wastage costs also rise, so I cannot absorb everything.”

The National Food Security Act covers up to 75% of the rural population and 50% of the urban population through subsidised foodgrain entitlements.

The Union government has continued free foodgrain for eligible beneficiaries under the public distribution system, making ration support one of the most consequential buffers against hunger and food-price shocks.

However, access is not always straightforward for mobile workers.

The One Nation One Ration Card system enables beneficiaries to draw entitlements outside their home state, but residents and community organisers said authentication problems, unawareness and documentation gaps could still cause difficulties.

Housing is the largest fixed expense for many families interviewed.

Cheaper rooms are often located in dense settlements with unreliable water supply, narrow lanes, poor drainage or limited ventilation.

Tenants may also pay separately for electricity at rates determined by landlords or local sub-metering arrangements.

A security guard living in Badarpur said his rent had been increased twice in three years.

He did not want his name published because his landlord lived in the same building.

His 12-hour shifts left little scope for a second job, while overtime was not consistently available.

“Moving means paying a deposit, transport and brokerage, and perhaps travelling farther,” he said. “So even when the rent rises, we stay.”

Extreme weather intensifies these pressures.

During severe summer heat, outdoor workers face dehydration and lost productivity, while households spend more on water, fans, coolers and electricity.

Heavy rain can flood roads and disrupt hourly work.

For people without paid leave, a weather-related absence is an immediate wage cut.

Dr Meera Nair, a public-health researcher working on heat exposure among informal workers, said household economics and health were inseparable.

“A worker who cannot afford to miss a shift may continue despite dizziness or fever,” Nair said. “The eventual medical cost can be much higher.

Heat action plans must reach workplaces and informal settlements, not remain limited to advisories.”

Public hospitals offer a critical safety net, but patients often face travel, queues and lost wages.

Private treatment may be faster but can create debt.

The government’s Ayushman Bharat-Pradhan Mantri Jan Arogya Yojana provides hospitalisation cover to eligible families, while states run additional schemes.

Outpatient medicines, diagnostics and income lost during treatment can nevertheless remain substantial burdens.

Education presents a similar mixture of expanded access and hidden cost.

Families cited uniforms, shoes, stationery, transport, digital devices and private tuition as recurring expenses.

Parents said they viewed education as their children’s strongest route to better work, making it among the last items they wanted to cut.

India’s official labour indicators have shown improvement in overall labour-force participation and unemployment in recent years, according to the Periodic Labour Force Survey.

But those broad measures do not fully describe job quality, earnings volatility, underemployment or access to benefits.

A person working a small number of hours can be counted as employed even if the income is insufficient for basic needs.

Professor Anil Sharma, a labour economist at a Delhi-based public university, said household experience depended less on gross domestic product alone than on wages, prices and the public services available locally.

“High growth creates fiscal and employment opportunities, but distribution matters,” Sharma said. “If real wages stagnate for some groups and housing or food costs rise, those households will not experience growth in the way aggregate numbers suggest.”

Background

India has undergone a far-reaching economic transformation marked by rapid urbanisation, digital payments, expanding highways and metro networks, a larger services sector and growing consumer markets.

The country is among the world’s biggest economies, and government capital expenditure has prioritised transport and other infrastructure.

At the same time, the overwhelming majority of workers remain outside conventional, secure salaried employment with comprehensive benefits.

Informal employment includes street vending, domestic work, small workshops, construction, farm labour, home-based production and app-mediated services.

Such jobs sustain cities but frequently lack written contracts, paid holidays, employer-funded health protection and predictable wage progression.

Migration connects rural and urban India.

Workers move for employment while maintaining financial and family ties with their home districts.

Remittances support parents, spouses and children, but migrants may struggle to access housing, voter registration, schools, healthcare and welfare benefits at their destination.

The gap between infrastructure visible at the city scale and services available at the neighbourhood scale shapes everyday life.

A new expressway may reduce regional travel time, while the worker using it still lives without dependable piped water.

Digital systems can speed up payments and benefit transfers, but a failed authentication or inactive bank account can leave a vulnerable citizen without immediate recourse.

What it means

The accounts from Delhi do not suggest that every household is worse off or that economic expansion has produced no benefits.

Workers pointed to better connectivity, wider use of bank accounts, free foodgrain, digital transfers and improved access to consumer services as meaningful changes.

Their central concern was resilience.

Families with irregular earnings can manage routine expenses, but one hospitalisation, job interruption, rent increase or school payment can destabilise the entire budget.

Savings are thin, formal credit is difficult to obtain, and informal loans often carry high costs.

Policy effectiveness therefore depends not only on announcing schemes but on whether benefits are adequate, portable and easy to claim.

Affordable rental housing near employment centres, stronger urban primary healthcare, reliable public transport and enforceable worker protections could directly increase disposable income and reduce risk.

Reactions

Trade-union organisers have called for minimum earnings standards, accident insurance and transparent grievance systems for gig and informal workers.

Platform companies have generally argued that flexible work creates income opportunities and that rigid employment rules could reduce participation, while some have introduced limited insurance and welfare measures.

Resident welfare representatives in south Delhi said households employing domestic and security workers were also facing higher costs, but acknowledged that small pay increases often failed to match workers’ rent and travel expenses.

Community organisations working with migrants said portability had improved through national digital systems, though awareness and last-mile assistance remained uneven.

They urged governments to operate help desks in labour markets, transport hubs and informal settlements rather than relying only on online registration.

What happens next

The immediate test will be whether wage growth and job creation become broad enough to outpace essential household costs.

Upcoming official releases on consumer prices, employment and national income will provide the macroeconomic picture, but local data on rents, commuting expenses and informal earnings will be equally important.

Governments will also face scrutiny over implementation of labour codes, social-security provisions for gig workers, urban housing programmes and heat-protection measures.

Expansion of portable welfare benefits could particularly help migrants who work in one state while their documents and families remain in another.

For Devi, such policy debates return to a simple monthly ledger.

She wants a shorter commute, stable wages and a school path for her children that does not depend on borrowing.

“We are not asking to sit at home,” she said as her bus approached. “We are working every day.

We want the work to be enough for the family.”