Ram Chander, a construction worker, who had migrated to Delhi from Etah district UP, waited across the road from a public school in Samalkha an hour before cooked food distribution was to start on March 30

Across the road, women had started to gather for the evening meal distribution. Many of them work as tailors and sweepers at export firms a few kilometers away at Udyog Vihar, and Manesar.

Food queues at Kapasheda border this week

Long food queues for a cooked meal at Kabadi Basti on Kapasheda border, Delhi where thousands work as sweepers, wastepickers, at construction sites, as headloaders

More food queues, at a basti next to urban farm houses in south Delhi

A construction worker Subhash Arora, carrying 10 kilo flour from his daughter's house miles away, stopped a few minutes on the sidewalk outside a wedding resort on NH-24, in Delhi

Prakash of Kachra Kamgar Union organizing a meal of rice and chana dal for 1,500 waste-pickers families in SW Delhi

Neeraj with his mother Jhunni, who works as a waste picker, in the queue. Many infants and children waited in queue and hour-half hour with their parents

Azeema Bibi who sweeps three homes every day and was in a food queue at Kapasheda Delhi

Jhunni and Sunita, migrants from Nalanda Bihar, who have worked and lived in Delhi 20 years but were not able to get ration cards. “The children are crying out of hunger, how long should we stay hungry?”

Laxmi , who works as a sweeper and head loader at construction sites, last she worked at building an office: “I have Aadhaar and PAN card, but i cannot get a ration card. They send me around in circles”

Rajeena, outside district collector SW Delhi office: “Hard to get food since two days. I have tried many times earlier but I don’t have a ration card”

“I am Munni Chauhan. I am a widow, I live by myself and the small shop I run is now shut. How should we get food to eat, I came to ask the police”. On National highway 24 Delhi.

(A detailed report with interviews with these residents of south / south west Delhi will be on Newslaundry.)