NEW DELHI: Amid the second wave of COVID-19 in India, the heartbreaking visuals of migrants trudging down the streets for hundreds of kilometres to reach their homes made many citizens step forward to extend aid and support in several ways. A number of community initiatives—some providing food to those facing starvation, others arranging transport for the labourers, and a few helping with accommodation for the families—cropped up across the city in an attempt to help the government prevent migrant exodus. Mazdoor Kitchen is one such community initiative launched by Rashid Ansari, a martial arts instructor and performing arts practitioner-director along with Nandita Narain, a Delhi University professor, in March 2020. Till date, North campus-based Ansari and Narain’s community-led voluntary programme continues to work ceaselessly to provide healthy meals every day to daily wage workers and migrant families residing in Delhi.
“In 2020, at the moment when migrant families started walking on foot, I remember my parents [Ansari and Narain] telling me that they were deeply angry and wanted to do something. My father told me ‘how can I be comfortable sitting in the confines of my home, eating a hot meal, when there are people on the road who have to travel thousands of kilometers just to be safe?’,” shares their daughter Nida Ansari, who helps with fundraising and outreach.
Helping people in need
Mazdoor Kitchen was set up as part of Mazdoor Dhaba, an initiative by teachers from North Delhi that ran from the garage of St. Stephen’s College’s principal's house. By July, as the impact of the lockdown eased in Delhi, many from the group shifted their operations but Ansari and Narain ventured out to drive Mazdoor Kitchen as an independent, voluntary citizen-run initiative.
Their team—comprising Ansari, two chefs, and five other people—has been providing an average of 450 packets of meals daily to migrant families residing in various neighbourhoods adjoining North Campus such as Azad Market, Pul Bangash, Nigambodh Ghat, and other slum colonies of Kingsway Camp. Operating from a rented facility in Malka Ganj, the team of Mazdoor Kitchen starts meal preparations every day in the afternoon. “The cooks come in by 12pm; preparations are done; vegetables chopped. By 3:30pm, the food is cooked. Then, we start packaging the food, which is finally out for delivery by 7 in the evening,” explains Nida.
Apart from providing meals, Ansari and his team also help economically-stressed families with ration kits, gas subsidies, and direct cash transfers. The money needed to run the Kitchen has been raised through donations via a Ketto fundraiser and other NGOs such as Goonj, Aao Khilayein, Aman Biradri Trust. Mazdoor Kitchen has also been instrumental in providing better employment opportunities to people who had lost their livelihoods during the pandemic—their cook Sagar was a former banquet chef; Roshni, who helps them with packaging, was a potter.
Leading a community initiative is accompanied with its own set of challenges. A determined Rashid, however, plans to continue this initiative as long as he can. “It is the least that one can do. Once you start seeing what is around you?, the least you can do is help out in whatever meagre manner you can to the best of your ability,” says Rashid. “This might be just a drop in the ocean ocean, but it is a regular consistent drop,” Rashid concludes.