It was the last week of April, when a coronavirus surge was devastating Delhi, with overwhelmed hospitals running out of oxygen, and crematoriums running out of space. India’s capital was under a strict lockdown. Most economic activity had come to a halt.
But every morning, a 50-year-old construction supervisor travelled over 20 km from his home in West Delhi to the heart of the city to supervise a small part of the Narendra Modi government’s ambitious project to redevelop the Central Vista.
Across the city, most construction projects had stalled since the lockdown rules allowed only projects with workers staying on the site to operate. But an exception had been made for the Central Vista project, which was declared an “essential service”, with permissions to bring workers on buses, as Scroll.in had first reported.
The supervisor, who asked to remain anonymous, oversaw around 30 workers engaged in road construction work on the 3.2-km stretch between Rajpath and…