New India Foundation

Neha Dixit is an independent journalist based in New Delhi. She has covered politics, gender and social justice for seventeen years. Most of her work is investigative, narrative and long-form.

She has reported for Al Jazeera, The Washington Post, The New York Times, The Caravan, The Wire, and other notable publications. She has won over a dozen international and national journalism awards, including the One Young World Journalist of the Year Award 2020, the International Press Freedom Award 2019 from the Committee to Protect Journalists, the Chameli Devi Jain Award for Outstanding Woman Journalist 2017, the Kurt Schork Award in International Journalism 2014, the Lorenzo Natali Prize for Journalism 2011 from the European Commission, among others.

NIF Books

What does the life of an ordinary working-class Indian look and feel like? In this outstanding book, the award winning journalist Neha Dixit traces the story of one such faceless Indian woman, from the early 1990s to the present day. What emerges is a picture of a life lived under constant corrosive tension. Syeda X left Banaras for Delhi with her young family in the aftermath of riots triggered by the demolition of the Babri Masjid. In Delhi, she settled into the life of a poor migrant, juggling multiple jobs a day – from trimming the loose threads of jeans to cooking namkeen, and from shelling almonds to making tea strainers.Syeda has done over fifty different types of work, earning paltry sums in the process. And if she ever took a day off, her job would be lost to another faceless migrant.

Researched for close to a decade, in this book, we meet an unforgettable cast of characters: a rickshaw driver in Chandni Chowk who ends up tragically dead in a terrorist blast; a doctor who gets arrested for pre-natal sex determination; a gau rakshak whose sister elopes with Syeda’s son; and policemen who delight in beating young Muslim men.

In the end, things comes to a grotesque full circle for Syeda. Her life is upturned for the umpteenth time during the Delhi riots of 2020. But displacement, tragedy and hardships are the things she is used to – being poor and Muslim and a woman. Written with empathy and deep insight, this book is a portal to a harsh world hidden away from elite Indians. It is the story of untold millions and a searing account of urban life in New India.

Reviews:

‘One might imagine that it doesn’t get harder than being poor and uneducated, a Muslim and a woman in today’s India. This unique biography of a brave and tenacious woman worker in the unorganized sector shows how the state, through its fitful acts of heavy-handed regulation, makes it much worse. She tries many things and masters them, but just when it looks like her economic life has turned a corner, the state steps in to fix some problem that it should not have permitted to arise in the first place, and her job and hope are gone. An important and eye-opening work.’ – Abhijit V. Banerjee

This remarkable book blends fine-grained reportage with moving evocations of time and place. Through the struggles of a single family Neha Dixit deftly traces the tumultuous and conflict-ridden history of our country over the past three decades. The focus always remains on Syeda, her husband and her children, yet through their lives we come to acquire a deeper understanding of religious majoritarianism, the darker side of India’s much trumpeted ‘growth story’, and the corruption and criminalization of the state. This is a deeply impressive debut by a gifted and extremely courageous writer.’ – Ramachandra Guha

‘This is the heart-wrenching reality of modern India, the unvarnished truth through the eyes of a melancholic woman and the people around her.They are the nameless poor whose monotonous existence is both a blessing and an irritant for us. Syeda’s life is a mirror held to us. She is Mother India, wailing for a healing touch and some compassion. Neha Dixit has found an unusual protagonist to tell us the unvarnished, ugly truth about us.’ – Josy Joseph

‘Neha Dixit is a resolute, courageous and empathetic writer. In this powerful and bracing book, she puts the spotlight on one ordinary Indian. In a spare but effective, matter-of-fact style that lets the story speak for itself, she rescues the lives of ordinary Indians from invisibility. But she also rescues them from time-worn tropes of condescension, pity and resilience, and restores dignity to their agency. The story of this life, grappling with the weight of fate and society will leave you defenceless and gutted.’ – Pratap Bhanu Mehta