Abstract
This paper explores how livelihood vulnerabilities of urban poor may be addressed by forming neighbourhood community-centric Self-Help Groups. The Covid-19 pandemic has substantially impacted India’s urban systems. Lockdowns to reduce virus transmission chains had disproportionately affected urban poor, working in the informal economy either as daily wage labour or self-employed petty trader. While all segments of the urban poor had faced difficulties, the people who suffered most are inter-state migrants. Apart from sudden loss of income, they also faced threats of evictions from slum tenements and various other forms of local vulnerabilities. Prolonged closures of economic activities in big cities during the early phase (March to May 2020) of the Covid-19 pandemic, triggered a process of massive deurbanization as millions of migrant workers returned to their home states. Many of them came back to their workplaces as economic activities began to restart from June 2020 onwards. But the advent of a deadly second wave from March 2021, had again forced reverse migration, albeit at a smaller scale. The way, India’s urban governance mechanism had sought to mitigate this livelihood crisis varies from state to state. The paper seeks to draw lessons about good practice, through a case study of the Mission Shakti programme launched by Odisha. A predominantly rural state located in eastern India, Odisha encountered the challenge of generating employment, as large numbers of low and semi-skilled workforce started returning home from prosperous industrial hubs in western and southern India (such as Surat, Bangalore etc.). The Mission Shakti programme involves mapping of the skills of the returning people, re-training them, organising into neighbourhood-based self-help groups and redeployment as community healthcare support staff or to produce health care products (e.g. masks, sanitizers, PPE kits). The Mission Shakti programme demonstrates centralised planning at the level of the State Government and implementation through Urban Local Bodies. Based on the case studies, the paper suggests, how the successful interventions can be scaled up within the existing institutional arrangements of urban governance. The lessons drawn from the case studies are particularly useful for cities in the Global South having large informal sector workforce.
