Seema Kumar, a young beautician has just returned to Hyderabad after eight months of working on farms in her village. She was among the estimated 121 million people in India who lost their jobs after when the country went into a lockdown in March to contain the spread of the coronavirus
But unlike her usual city woes of searching for a hostel or negotiating shift timings, this time her worries are different. Kumar has come back to work at the same salon that employed her for the last three years without the commitment of a fixed wage. Instead of her usual monthly salary of Rs 8,500, Kumar has been informed that she will be paid only for her days of “productive” work: the weekends, festivals and other days of high demand.
Despite the anxieties, Kumar knows that she was one of eight women who worked at the salon before the lockdown, and now is one of the only two “senior” beauty therapists who have been asked to rejoin.
Kumar’s experience of finding little…