Meet the men earning 40p an hour rebuilding India’s corridors of power

The £1.3bn redevelopment of Delhi’s Central Vista area, including a new PM’s residence for Narendra Modi and parliament house, will open a fresh chapter of Indian politics. Arpan Rai reports from the site

A worker stands at the site of a redevelopment work of the Central Vista Avenue by Central Public Works Department, along the Rajpath road in New Delhi (AFP/Getty)

On a cold winter’s evening in the heart of Delhi, Mohammed Ashraf* is one of more than 9,000 labourers hard at work transforming India’s corridors of power, even as he struggles to change his own family’s quality of life.

Ashraf is working on the most prestigious and hotly-debated construction project in the country, a 134 billion rupees (£1.3bn) plan to redevelop the capital’s Central Vista with plush new offices for public servants, a new residence for prime minister Narendra Modi and a state-of-the-art new parliament building.

It’s a challenging task undertaken in tough conditions and behind a veil of secrecy – the entire construction site along what was the colonial-era Kingsway is hidden behind a huge metal fence – yet Ashraf and his fellow workers take home a daily wage of just Rs 400. With an average work day stretching from 10 hours up to 12 at the most, this works out at about 40p an hour.