The Interstate Migration Alliance and HELM Studio invite you into a conversation with migrant workers employed in the garment and domestic work sector in Gurgaon—a bustling industrial hub within the Delhi, National Capital Region. Lockstitch Lives: Migrants and the Megacity, a 360-degree interactive documentary, transport the user to the neighbourhoods of Gurgaon. Using 360-degree video, multimedia interactive images, photography and video, Lockstitch Lives provides deep insight into living and working conditions in the Delhi, National Capital Region.
India’s Delhi-National Capital Region (NCR)—the most populated city in India—is a spectacular manifestation of imbalanced economic growth within India, fueling rural-urban migration and the attendant concentration of migrant labour within this urban industrial hub. As Delhi-NCR expands across distinct village, municipal and state jurisdictions, exclusion of migrant communities from urban planning strip Indian migrant citizens of their citizenship rights within their native countries. As a result, while national citizenship may be at once universally inclusive in membership it is all too often unequal in distribution.
Lockstitch Lives: Migrants and the Megacity bring the challenges associated with exclusionary urbanisation to life. Explore the neighbourhoods of Dundahera, Mullahera, Sikanderpur Pahadi and Kartarpuri. Venture into the homes where migrants live and listen to their stories as they describe the challenges they face in accessing clean water and sanitation facilities, navigating relationships with landlords and keeping themselves safe from violence at home and at work. These experiences are deeply personal, unique to the Delhi, National Capital Region—and are also reflective of the living and working conditions faced by migrant workers in megacities across the globe.