‘Pushed out of comfort zone’: As migrants flee, urban homes feel the pinch

The migrant workers’ exodus from Gurugram amid a crackdown by the police has disrupted domestic work and sanitation, with residents becoming aware of the growing fear amongst the poorest to prove their citizenship 

Sanskriti Talwar

Garbage piles up in Sector 52, Gurugram, on August 6 following the departure of sanitation workers.

Sanskriti Talwar/The Migration Story

GURUGRAM, Haryana: On 19 July, 2025, Vandana Kohli, a resident of Sector 47 in Gurugram, received a panicked call from her domestic help saying that the latter wouldn’t be coming to work. Why? Because she and her family were in hiding. 

The panicked domestic help, Pinki, went on to tell Kohli that 12 men from her community, all Bengali-speaking migrants living in the same neighbourhood, were being beaten and detained by the police.

That same night, the family boarded a train back to their native village in Malda district, West Bengal. Kohli only found out the next morning, when she called to check if Pinki would be coming in. She told Kohli that they were on a train and would return once their documents are verified. 

The police verification drive that began on 15 July 2025 in Gurugram to identify “illegal immigrants” triggered a citywide exodus of Bengali-speaking Muslim migrant workers. In just weeks, the crackdown has disrupted domestic work, sanitation and other informal jobs, forcing even documented workers to flee out of fear, some without notice, others after brief, terrified calls to employers. Many had lived and worked in the city for years, and within days, entire sectors and the residents who relied on them have been experiencing a sudden breakdown in routine.

Now, in their sudden absence, this once-invisible workforce has become sharply visible, even as earlier this year, in February 2025, a Gurugram housing society made headlines for mandating separate lifts for delivery executives, a move that drew sharp criticism. The city’s dependency on the migrant workforce has always been marked by a quiet exclusion. It is only now, however, as routines unravel, that their absence is being fully felt, say migrant rights campaigners.

Santosh Poonia, Director, India Labour Line (Knowledge and Learning) at Aajeevika Bureau, a non-profit organisation working for the rights of migrant workers said, “Employers do consider migrant workers important. It’s not like they have an easy replacement for these workers. But their importance is only recognised after the workers leave, not before.”

According to the Gurugram City police, “illegal immigrants” are defined as those residing in India without valid nationality documents.

“The verification drive to identify illegal immigrants is an ongoing process, and this time, when it began on 15 July, 2025, it coincided with a Union Home Ministry order issued around the same time,” Assistant Sub Inspector Sandeep Kumar, spokesperson for Gurugram Police, told The Migration Story. “The police can carry out checks at any time. Earlier, Nigerians living illegally were also deported similarly.”

He added that police are verifying nationality through identity documents such as voter ID cards or passports. “An Aadhaar card is not considered as proof of nationality by the government. It only establishes identity,” he said.

Since the drive began, the police have ‘identified’ 10 undocumented immigrants from Bangladesh so far, and their deportation process is underway.

Responding to allegations of violence against workers, Kumar said, “There is no evidence to prove it. No First Information Report (FIR) has been filed either.”

Vandana Kohli, Sector 47 resident, cooks for her family after her domestic worker left for West Bengal amid a police crackdown. Sanskriti Talwar/The Migration Story

The Migration Story contacted Kohli’s domestic help, Pinki, over the phone, and she said that she and her family had all the necessary documents, including Aadhaar cards, ration cards, voter IDs and birth certificates.  

“But nobody checked. There was only beating,” she said. 

Pinki’s mother-in-law, Ameena Bibi, added that they had been in Gurugram for 25 years. “What happened was just wrong. First, the police made two to three rounds of the area where we live. Then, around noon, some people came and started thrashing and picking up people,” Bibi said. 

“No one could tell whether they were policemen or someone else. The vehicle they came in didn’t even have a number plate. They picked up men, and then later let them go. The maalik (landlord) himself was showing them the houses, and only then did those men pick up people. The landlord didn’t even say that he had ID proofs for all of us. When he rents us the rooms, he takes our documents. Then why all this? He just said, ‘Sarkar karwa rahi hai’ (the government is doing this),” she told The Migration Story.

Finally, the family had to get verification from the local police in their native village.  

“We wanted the Gurugram police to verify our documents, but since they weren't doing it, the landlord asked us to get the police verification done from our village instead. After seeing our documents, the police here are giving us in writing that we are from this village, have a home here and are not Bangladeshi,” Bibi said.

“We’ll return as soon as the police verifies all our family members’ documents and gives it in writing. We’re just waiting for that now,” Pinki added.

KEEPING URBAN HOMES RUNNING

With the migrants making a mad scramble to get out before things get worse, their employers were trying to make sense of what was happening based on whatever information was trickling in from various sources. 

“The identification drive to find those without valid documents was understandable. But soon, fear spread even among workers who had proper papers, including my domestic worker. Her family decided to leave because no one wanted to deal with the police,” said Kanika Bansal, a resident of Sector 57.

A rumour that trains would stop running after 1 August, 2025 added to the panic, Bansal added.

Her domestic help informed her on 19 July, 2025 that she would be leaving the next day. “She didn’t want to go,” Bansal said. “She told me this job is how she feeds her family, and there’s no work back home. She felt forced to leave.”

Bansal recalls her domestic help’s exact words: “Even if we have all the valid documents, we don’t feel secure enough to believe that anyone will stand by us or that the police won’t beat us.”

While the panic and the reaction was first seen in Gurugram, it has now spread to other parts of the National Capital Region (NCR), with domestic workers in areas like Noida, too, feeling the heat. 

The exodus has exposed how deeply Gurugram’s urban households depend on migrant workers, who are now fleeing in fear overnight.

Bansal’s maid, for instance, handled sweeping, mopping, dusting, cleaning and chopping vegetables. “You need a dedicated person to do all this, so you can focus on your work, manage your children and everything else,” said Bansal, who has a six-year-old daughter. “Now imagine all of it falling on us in a nuclear setup, where both husband and wife are working. You have to manage everything and put in an extra two to three hours for this work each day. It’s not sustainable.”

The next two weeks, Bansal said, “It felt like being back in COVID times.” She would wake up at 5:45 a.m. instead of 6:30 pm, get her daughter ready for school, start work by 9, and plan meals in advance. “But still, the work piles up, and then the load shifts to the weekend,” she said.

Finally, on August 1, 2025, Bansal hired another domestic worker, a migrant from Madhya Pradesh, and has since been training her. But the uncertainty remains. “There’s always the fear that after all the effort you put into training someone to your preferences, they might leave for better pay because demand is high, and supply is low.”

A resident on a bike throws garbage into a trolley parked in Sector 52, Gurugram.

Sanskriti Talwar/The Migration Story

MANPOWER SHORTAGE

While some residents scrambled to manage without domestic workers, others began to feel the strain on public services.

For Pallavi Sharma, also a resident of Sector 57, sanitation has become a serious concern, especially during the monsoon, when the risk of dengue, malaria and other illnesses is high. 

Earlier, sanitation workers would go door-to-door to collect waste. But after many left following the verification drive, Sharma’s family, like others in the neighbourhood, now has to drop off their garbage in a tractor-trolley run by the Municipal Corporation of Gurugram through contractors.

A sanitation emergency was formally acknowledged by the Municipal Corporation of Gurugram (MCG) in an order issued on 29 July, 2025 by ​commissioner Pradeep Dahiya. The order cited a lack of manpower and explicitly referred to the “ongoing exodus situation in the city” as key reasons for the crisis. It also noted that the private contractor responsible for door-to-door collection had failed to deliver the required vehicles and workforce.

In response, the MCG allowed municipal councillors, contractors and the general public to temporarily engage vehicles to stabilise waste collection services.

A new tender was floated only on 26 July, 2025, and officials expect the system to take five to six months to stabilise. Clearly, a long term fix isn’t immediately in sight. 

In Sharma’s locality, Bengali-speaking migrants hired through an agency used to come twice a week to clean the washrooms in houses. “Now, due to the manpower shortage, they either come once a week or we adjust based on availability,” Sharma told The Migration Story. 

“All this has pushed us out of our comfort zones,” said Sharma, who works as a social worker and lives with her family of four. “We were all used to living in a certain ecosystem. People are managing, but this isn’t a long-term solution.”

Her own domestic help, she added, fortunately did not leave as “she belongs to a different community.”

Sanskriti Talwar is an independent journalist based in New Delhi. She reports on human rights, gender, sustainability and rural issues from the northern regions of India.

Residents of Sector 57 empty their garbage bins into a parked trolley during rainfall. Earlier, garbage collectors would come door-to-door to pick up waste. Picture courtesy Pallavi Sharma

The ripple effects are also being felt in Sector 83, over 16 kilometres away. Vijaya Laxmi, who lives with her son in a gated society, said that car cleaners from the Bengali-speaking Muslim community were among the first to leave. By the end of July, domestic maids had also started heading back to their villages in West Bengal.

Laxmi’s own domestic worker stopped coming to work by 31 July, 2025. However, she didn’t leave the city, after confirming she had valid documents, she decided to stay. Still, the disruption led to a spike in hiring costs. “Families are now paying 3,000 to 4,000 rupees a month to the domestic workers for the same work they earlier did for 2,500 rupees,” Laxmi said.

A homemaker, Laxmi has been managing without help since August 1, though not without difficulty. 

“One morning, while cleaning my car, I suddenly felt dizzy, almost like a blackout,” Laxmi said. That’s when she realised this routine was starting to take a toll on her health. 

Vijaya Laxmi, a resident of Sector 83, has been managing household chores herself since her domestic worker stopped coming amid the police crackdown. Picture courtesy Vijaya Laxmi

As the situation unfolded, both residents and domestic workers began turning to their first point of contact: the Resident Welfare Association (RWA).

Kusum Sharma, RWA chairperson of Suncity township in Sector 54, said they were “the first to take the punch from all sides.” In late July, she organised a meeting with 250 domestic workers and the local SHO to clarify what documents were needed.

“The Suncity township RWA have even offered to assist the police with preliminary verification by providing valid documents of the workers working in their locality,” Kusum said.

In most gated societies across Gurugram, where residents like Bansal and Laxmi live, maintenance is handled by agencies that also carry out the first level of verification, typically through Aadhaar cards. Residents are only required to fill out an online form confirming that the worker is employed at their home.

At Suncity township, Kusum said the RWA is verifying documents such as voter ID cards, ration cards, land records from workers’ native villages and contact details of their village panchayat members. “In cases where a worker doesn’t have a voter ID, we verify their parents’ documents instead,” she said.

Aadhaar cards, however, are no longer considered fully reliable, she added, as they are often found to be duplicated.

Kusum Sharma, RWA chairperson at Suncity township, Sector 54, at a meeting with 250 domestic workers and the local SHO to clarify required documents. Kusum Sharma

Santosh Poonia of Aajeevika Bureau said that there’s also a government agenda at play here, and no one wants to be seen standing against it. “The employers in whose homes these workers have been employed for years have the right to vote here, they have political influence. If they collectively raised their voice, the government would definitely take notice, and it would create pressure on the local administration,” said Poonia. 

“But these workers neither have voting rights here nor any say in the system​, which means their voices go unheard. Even if employers are now facing problems because of this exodus, no one is going to speak up. As per Article 19 of the Indian Constitution, every Indian citizen has the right to move freely and pursue a livelihood in any part of the country,” added Poonia.

This isn’t the first time such a verification drive to identify “illegal immigrants” has taken place in Gurugram. Conversations with residents suggest that a similar exercise happened two years ago as well.

Kanika Bansal and her husband anticipated it might become a regular occurrence when they moved to their sector around that time. “So, we invested in automated machines like a dishwasher and a robot vacuum cleaner to reduce our dependency on help. It’s expensive,” Bansal said.

Kohli, too, recalled the earlier drive. At the time, her domestic worker hadn’t left, though others in the locality did. “When there’s a need for work, no one thinks about where someone comes from or what community they belong to. The family downstairs had hired her, and since we needed help too, we hired her as well,” Kohli said.

“They call Gurugram the Millennium City. And this is what we get,” Bansal added. “First power cuts and waterlogging, and now this. All this just adds to the frustration, especially when we’re paying such high taxes.”

Still, many residents are hoping their workers will return after 15 August, 2025, assuming that the police’s action will last till Independence Day. 

“Families here keep calling their domestic workers to check when they’ll be back. Many say they’re getting their paperwork done and will return soon,” said Laxmi.

Edited by 

Sanskriti Talwar is an independent journalist covering rural India and the lives of rural migrants in cities.