Demonetisation: Dalits hit in Agra, struggle to feed families

Agra: Ever since the demonetisation was announced on November 8, housewives, especially those of belonging to Dalit households are facing serious trouble managing their households.

Most of these women who as labourers at construction sites, footwear or brush factories are suffering as many construction sites have stopped work and the factories have asked most of their auxillary workers to stay home, till the present cash crisis is resolved.

With their husbands also out of work due to the inability of the factories to pay, manging daily household affairs has become a struggle.

Sheela Devi, a Dalit housewife from the Nagla Chhaua area of Agra told India Today that nearly all women in the area are either sitting at home without any work or are lining up at the banks to convert their old currency notes. Devi added that it is becoming hard to even eat two meals a day, in absence of any employment and there is no money to pay the installment of the housing loan that she had taken to build her house.

WOMEN PROTEST 

A large group of these women organised a brief sit-in at the residence of the Agra District Magistrate Gaurav Dayal, so that he ehars their plea. When the DM failed to offer them any reassurance, these women blocked the Mahatma Gandhi Road, causing a two-hour long jam.

Bhagwati Devi told India Today that she stitched shoe covers along with her three daughters to run their family, but after the shoe factories closed, the daily and weekly payments from the factories have stopped and meeting the basic necessities has become very difficult. The lenders are demanding payment of loan installments but when there was nothing at home to even buy a few kilograms of flour, how could she pay the lenders? She added that she was being threatened by the lenders that they will send her to jail if she didn’t pay the installment but she had nothing to give them except try to mortgage her house, but even that was finding no takers in these difficult times.

Baby, a resident of Billochpura, Tajganj said that her husband Mohd. Zakir works in box-making factory but it has been locked since November 9 and all the groceries and other necessary stuff at their home has finished. She said in such a situation, should she poison her family to support demonetisation?

Rajkumari of Sevla said that she sells embroidered handkerchiefs with her husband at the Taj Mahal and other historical monuments to sustain their livelihood, but since the currency demonetisation, the number of tourists coming to Agra is very less and even those tourists were not buying the handkerchiefs. She Rajkumari said that she has three young daughters and a son and in the absence of any work, there was no way to continue feeding them till PM Modi’s deadline ended on December 30.

Her husband Suraj Singh said that had PM Narendra Modi cared for such families, he would not have push them into such a mess. He said that dozens of people have died in the past 14-15 days, but the PM hasn’t even expressed his condolences to those people.

Source: India Today In