12 July,2026 07:33 AM IST | Mumbai | Arpika Bhosale
A ‘Mental health Tuesday’ group session being conducted by NGOs Aajeevika and RAAH who work with labour. PICS/ASHISH RAJE
Priyanka Raghunath Gaikar walks in walks in a cream colured salwar kamees and mistmatched tie-dye duppatta, her trusted purse hooked on her shoulder. Gaikar is a cook and domestic worker who works around Aajeevika Bureau's office in Saki Naka. She's here for a group therapy session for women domestic workers in the area.
The initiative, called Mental Health Tuesdays, comes from the same organisation that had set up a labour helpline in 2021 in the aftermath of the COVID pandemic. More recently, though, the helpline has received distraught calls from workers in emotional and mental turmoil.
Reshma Jagtap, regional coordinator (west zone) for Aajeevika Bureau, told this reporter, "We have a staff of eight [on the helpline], each with a speciality." The calls come in not just from Maharashtra, but Rajasthan, Gujarat, Telangana, Karnataka, and other states.
(From left) Sadiya Mohammed, Juilee Rasam and Vandana Kripalani from RAAH, that provide group therapy to daily wage earners in this initiative
Usually, it's a common complaint: unpaid dues from the contractor. "But over the last year or so, our helpline workers have observed an increasing toll on the labourers' mental health. Unpaid dues were always a problem, but now there is desperation. We grow concerned on such calls, but we are not mental health professionals," she added.
Jagtap asked around the city's NGO circles and was recommended to reach out to the EmancipAction India Foundation-RAAH, a trauma-focused mental health organisation. Founder Vandana Kripalani, and her colleagues Sadiya Mohammed and Juilee Rasam, comprise the core group collaborating with Aajeevika's initiative.
The Labour Line helpline for conflict resolution at Andheri, Saki Naka
The session we encountered Gaikar at is the third such group therapy session. Waiting to meet her friends before the session kicked off, Gaikar told us, "They have said that they will help us deal with being swindled out of money or being treated badly." When her friends got there, each woman came with stories of hardships. As one woman broke down in the circle, we chose to walk out, honouring their right to privacy during therapy, even if in a group.
Mohammed, Kripsalani, and Rasam told us that in the previous sessions, the tone was initially more of a quiet desperation, as it was filled with men who were daily wage workers. "One man was over the age of 60 and stayed quiet at first. But on hearing a younger man speak up, he too began to open up. He told us that the milkman from his village had been harassing him with phone calls, asking him to pay the bill for milk that his wife and children had bought. He himself hadn't been paid for a job he had done," said Rasam. Kripalani added, "He said âHum sabka bojh uthate hai, hamarein bojh ka kya? [We carry everyone's weight, what about ours?']."
Aajeevika Bureau
At the same time, if resilience were to ever take a physical form, it would look like these workers, say the three professionals. It is in these group sessions that they find a safe space to set aside their burdens momentarily and share their troubles. "Sometimes we might take a minute to recover from their stories, but they share their pain and then make a joke about it in the same breath," said Rasam.
Daily wage earners are often viewed through the lens of exploitation or pity, taking away their agency so that the world can conveniently view them as a monolith with no self-assertion. But spaces like this, and the stories they allow to unfurl, are an enduring sign that Mumbai - built on the blood, sweat, and tears of labourers - will always give back to them.
A free legal aid office too was opened on June 25 at Khairaini Naka, which is one of the most well-known unorganised loose labour pick-up points. The road connects Andheri's Saki Naka and Jogeshwari, and has seen many such cases that Aajeevika has mediated on.
"Many labourers have arrears over Rs 1 lakh and above and it's a big amount for them, but they do not have the resources to go the labour court to ask for what is owed to them. Which is why we have started the legal aid office and hope to empower more and more labourers to do the same," said Jagtap.
# 1800-833-9020
Indian Labour Line offers an alternative labour dispute resolution mechanism that offers free legal support and mediation services to unorganised sector workers
