For nearly 40 years, Karmunisha has lived and worked in Delhi’s Sundar Nagri, selling vegetables from a small handcart. A profession that has become progressively more challenging. From extreme heat, to cold, to toxic smog and even the dehumanisation of street vendors, Karmunisha has had to endure many challenges that threaten to destroy her source of income and health. Over the years, both she and her husband have developed breathing issues, and the situation has only become grimmer. In the past few days, their breathing issues have aggravated due to the skyrocketing air pollution levels in the city. She has been advised to rest to recover. But that is a luxury daily wagers like her cannot afford. Every day, Karmunisha has to wash the vegetables and set up her cart in the local market. Even if she does take the day off, she cannot spend extended hours in her small and poorly ventilated home. She instead sets up a cot at the end of her lane to get some rest. Her breathing difficulties are costing her many workdays. The exhaustion that comes with breathlessness makes it difficult for her to stand at her vegetable cart and conduct business in the smoggy weather. Sometimes, this causes her vegetables to get stale, leading to further losses. “There have been times when customers have refused to buy vegetables from me when they see me cough and visibly breathless,” she says.
Just a few lanes away, Abdul, who has been selling bananas for many years in Sundar Nagri’s Saturday market, also suffers from a breathing illness. “My health fails for two weeks every month. This affects my earnings. But in winter, when pollution worsens, I struggle to make the bare minimum,’” he says. He spends his time sitting on a wooden platform in his lane, and the responsibility of setting up the stall falls on his 12-year-old daughter, compromising her studies. While balancing her school obligations, the 7th grade student manages the business and also looks after her father, with no time for play or recreation.
Unfortunately, Karmunisha and Abdul are not alone at the forefront of the air pollution crisis in Delhi. Their story is part of a larger reality for millions of outdoor and informal workers in the national capital. Eighty per cent of the city’s total workforce works in the informal sector, and a vast majority of them work outdoors as street vendors, construction labourers, rickshaw pullers, waste pickers, gig workers, and the like.
However, when we talk about Delhi’s air pollution crisis, this larger working class is invisible in the debate, and policies. Narratives by the civil society and the government are mostly, if not entirely, focussing on the struggles of more privileged and monied classes. In fact, informal settlements are often blamed for such adversities. Though there are thousands of research papers on Delhi’s air pollution crisis, few examine the impacts of toxic air on outdoor workers, who are most exposed, and hence most vulnerable.
Delhi’s air pollution crisis is brutal, but the way we talk about it is worse. We talk numbers, not people. Every winter we repeat the same outrage, debates and ‘expert’ noise. But the people who suffer the most, Delhi’s workers, are seldom in the conversation. We all know that the workers contribute the least to this crisis but pay the highest price. Their health risks are greater; they have the most at stake — lives and livelihoods.
And the danger doesn’t end at their worksites. Not only are their workplaces — streets, markets, construction sites, open spaces — hazardous because of outdoor pollution, but their homes also increase their vulnerability. Most informal workers, like Karmunisha and Abdul, live in densely packed informal settlements where ventilation is poor, rooms are cramped, and polluted air seeps in easily. With little to no green cover, no air purifiers, and limited access to clean cooking fuel, their homes offer no escape from the toxic air. For millions of Delhi’s workers, the danger continues: they breathe poisonous air at work, and the same air follows them home. Additionally, they have near zero health facilities to protect themselves from extreme pollution and weather.
The worst part of this inequitable response to the air pollution crisis, is that most ‘solutions’ discriminate against the vast majority of the informal sector. ‘Work from home’, ‘stay indoors’ and ‘e-vehicles’ are offered as short-term and long-term solutions. But the gaping hole in this logic is there for everyone to see. Construction workers, street vendors, sanitation workers, gig workers — their lives happen outside. There is no “indoor” or a “work from home” option in their swanky job portals. And then there is the shutting down of schools. This offers little or no reprieve to the majority of children and their parents. A low-wage labourer’s child staying home in more polluted air only adds to their responsibilities and worries. Instead, ensuring air purification systems in schools to ensure steady education and relief to the working population can be a basic provision to counter the impacts of the most polluted months.
One of the greatest misrepresentations of this crisis is that Delhi’s pollution is a scientific problem. It actually is a justice problem, a class problem and a problem of who gets protected and who gets abandoned. Indeed, we should demand long-term solutions to mitigate the air pollution crisis. But that cannot be where the conversation starts and ends. We have to put great emphasis on immediate, scalable and equitable measures for the working class. We must demand work loss compensation for daily wage labourers. And it’s not just pollution. This majority population is also more exposed and vulnerable to other weather extremities like heat, cold and floods.
In the case of extreme heat, an inspiring model was rolled out by SEWA or The Self Employed Women’s Association in 2024. A non-profit trade union, SEWA recognised the impact of climate disasters on informal sector workers, especially women and rolled out a Heatwave Insurance system for its 52,000 members. During last year’s pilot, more than 46,000 members received benefits to cope with the extreme heat distress. An association of women workers from the informal sector came up with a workable, scalable system with automatic payouts based on satellite data. These communities sit on a wealth of lived experiences and intelligence that can help create working solutions for the vast working class. Delhi’s pollution response has to start with its workers, their health, their livelihood and their safety. If not, we are not only deepening injustice but are also destabilising the network of workers and sectors that have kept our cities running for centuries. It's high time we stop ignoring the people who carry this city on their shoulders.
Deepali Tonk is a campaigner with Climate Action Lab, a youth-based community group on climate impacts
Avinash Chanchal works with Greenpeace South Asia
Views expressed are the authors’ own and don’t necessarily reflect those of Down To Earth