Dear readers,

The International Labour Day, marked on May 1, dates back to the date in 1886 when a workers’ strike enveloped the Haymarket Square in Chicago, and the violence against workers there was commemorated by an international federation of socialist groups and trade unions in support in 1889. At the height of the Industrial Revolution, workers had collectivised into a movement and achieved their demand for an eight-hour workday, improved work conditions and so on. May 1 has been globally commemorated by the working classes. 

Across India, 140 years after the Haymarket uprising, workers are still fighting for their rights, including an eight-hour shift and a liveable wage, facing police brutalities and retribution by employers. If cities are engines of growth, as the adage goes, then it’s the workers who keep the engines running, but, ironically, they are denied a life of dignity. This edition of  Question of Cities explores the intersection of workers and cities, especially informal workers; how gig work and climate events impact women workers in cities; the abandonment of workers’ housing as a right; voices of the kin of arrested workers in Noida and Manesar; and the great debate of AI’s impact on jobs.

In the lead essay, Akash Bhattacharya, historian, lawyer and trade unionist, explains how millions of poorly paid informal workers face inadequate housing, lack of basic amenities, and spatial and social marginalisation. This, coupled with the sliding back of workers’ rights with the new Labour Codes, and exposure to climate events have created a class of ‘informal citizens’ in India’s cities. Workers’ unions and grassroot organisations believe that urban social coalitions and mass mobilisation can force political action for workers to claim their Right to the City, he argues. Read it here.

Nearly 168 million women do informal work in India’s cities as street vendors, domestic workers, construction labourers, home-based workers, waste pickers, but most have no contracts or safety nets, writes Shilpi Bhardwaj, a Behaviour Researcher. Women informal workers report a measurable dip in earnings during peak summer months, up to a 30 percent decline in output, making them a blind spot in climate policies. India’s climate action plans fail women in the informal spaces; they acknowledge gender vulnerability but this hardly translates into measurable outcomes,  making gender inclusion symbolic rather than substantive. Read it here.

In the estimated 7.7 million workers in the gig economy in 2020-21, women were between 10-28 percent of the workforce. Multimedia journalist Ankita Dhar Karmakar shadows Zomato delivery rider, Lata, on Delhi’s roads to map her life. The earnings vary from as little as Rs 20 an order to Rs 60-70; there are many conditions to fulfil for paltry amounts. The relentless heat makes it worse for Lata and thousands of others while the Heat Action Plan which covers them remains on paper. The lack of cool shelters and toilets, unresponsive platforms, and the unjust nature of the work hardly make it a profession of choice for many women. Read it here.

The Bhilai Township, built across 16 sectors to house workers of independent India’s first major steel plant, had nearly 65,000 in the 1980s but now lies abandoned. Doctoral scholar Dipannita Mandal and research assistant Sourav Bhattacharya, both from IIT-Bhilai, bring us a picture of the abandoned buildings that hark back to a time when housing was part of the workers’ rights. The local government lacks jurisdiction over the Township land even as informal workers — who cannot afford anything better — somehow survive in the remnants of formal workers’ housing. Read it here.

It has been around three weeks that tens of protesting workers from Manesar and Noida were arrested. Their demands were basic – revision of minimum wages, improved working conditions, double pay for overtime, mandatory weekly offs, medical coverage, and timely bonus payments. The Rs 39 hike that a Noida MNC gave its workers last year was a mockery. But the protests in Manesar and Noida have landed many workers in jail, leaving them with cases, expenses and possible retribution at work. Team QoC speaks to their families who are running pillar to post with trade unionists, for their release. Read it here.

Artificial Intelligence may not be the only factor for the restructuring seen in work and job markets, but it cannot be overlooked that it is drastically changing the way people work. Generative AI is reshaping, not uniformly erasing, white-collar work, according to a study across nearly all United States job postings from 2019 through March 2025. Team QoC puts together a compendium of reports, studies, and articles showing the spectrum of AI’s global impact on employment — whether it will impact the blue-collar workers or knowledge-intensive workers, or will it displace the workforce itself. Read it here.

In our regular section, News Digest, read about extreme heat in India, home to 98 of the world’s 100 hottest cities; Snow cover in Hindu Kush Himalaya at lowest point in two decades; For the first time, all six recipients of Goldman Environmental Prize are women; Sea level rise is repeatedly flooding Venice.

Hope you find this edition engaging and worthwhile. We would love to hear from you at [email protected]. If you haven’t yet subscribed to Question of Cities, do so here and share our work on X, Instagram, and LinkedIn.

Smruti
May 01, 2026