Dalal Street disaster: Rs 12 lakh crore wiped out in three days as bears take over
The sentiments have further been weighed down by TCS's announcement of 12,000 job cuts and a relentless selling by foreign institutional investors (FIIs). Data for this month, up to 25th July, shows a net FII sell figure of Rs 20,262 crores. On Monday, they offloaded (net sales) shares worth Rs 5,876.76 crore.
'Markets are currently grappling with headwinds on both domestic and global fronts. On the domestic side, earnings disappointments and persistent foreign fund outflows are dampening sentiment,' said Ajit Mishra – SVP, Research, Religare Broking.
Mishra added that in the banking space, earlier resilience had helped limit the decline but renewed pressure across the sector—except for heavyweights ICICI Bank and HDFC Bank—is adding to participants' concerns.
Banking stocks came under severe pressure on Monday after Kotak Mahindra Bank plunged over 7% to close at Rs 1,966 following weak Q1 results. Other lenders, including IndusInd Bank, PNB, SBI, and Bank of Baroda, declined 1–3%. Mishra added that globally, uncertainty surrounding trade deals, despite strength in the US markets, is contributing to the cautious approach.
Vinod Nair, Head of Research, Geojit Investments, said that in contrast to domestic market performance, global markets remain broadly positive, supported by US-EU trade developments that are perceived as less concerning than anticipated.
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How separate lifts in Mumbai highrises sustain caste prejudice in the city
O n each workday Ahmad Sayyed, a deliveryman with a quick-commerce company in the North Mumbai suburb of Kandivali, aims to finish around 30 deliveries. If he reaches this goal, he earns around Rs 1,000 and an additional bonus. Most buildings he visits have less than 20 floors, and it takes him between ten and 15 minutes to complete a delivery from the time he accepts an order. This changes if the building has more than 20 floors. 'If a deliveryman is assigned to a high-rise building, he curses his luck,' said Sayyed. This is because many such high-rises, which can have 40 or more floors, do not allow deliverymen like Sayyed to use the main lifts, which are reserved for residents. Instead, they have to rely on service lifts, which are typically less frequent, slower and more crowded. 'It takes me double the time to visit such buildings,' Sayyed said. 'So making deliveries in such buildings is actually a loss because it eats into my earnings.' It is not just delivery workers who are barred from using the main elevators in large apartment complexes with several lifts. Even domestic workers, who are regular visitors to high-rise apartments, are subjected to the same segregation. 'It is humiliating and hurtful,' said a domestic worker in Lokhandwala Complex. 'In the society that I work at, dogs are allowed in the regular elevators, but workers must take the service elevator. Does this mean we're less than animals?' Conversations with both workers and residents of the high-rises suggested that the phenomenon of segregating elevators, earlier an exception in Mumbai, is now becoming the norm. As the city goes through a redevelopment boom, numerous old buildings in the city that had a single elevator are being converted into high-rises with several elevators. In these new buildings, workers are increasingly being denied access to common lifts and segregated into service lifts. 'All the new high-rise buildings tend to have separate service lifts,' Sayyed said. Workers in posh neighbourhoods said that between 60% and 70% of the buildings they visited for work had separate elevators for workers. In some societies, domestic workers are allowed to use the residential elevators only if they are accompanying their employer. Such rules led to distressing situations for domestic staff, said Mabel, a journalist who is based in Bandra. 'How do you explain to a nanny that when she's with a baby, she takes the one lift, but when she's on her own she takes the other lift?' she wrote. In other societies, domestic staff have to take different elevators even when accompanying their employers. 'It's terrible. In my building, the access to the service elevators is further away from the residential elevators,' said Janaki, a resident of Lokhandwala Complex. 'When my family is travelling somewhere and they need our domestic staff to help take their bags down, we take the residential elevators, but the staff has to walk further and carry the bags to the service elevator.' In his book Lifted: A Cultural History of the Elevator, cultural studies professor Andreas Bernard wrote that service elevators for workers were introduced in Europe towards the start of the twentieth century. But as nation-states embraced democracy, and values such as universal citizenship and egalitarianism gained popularity, the idea came to be seen as outdated. Indeed, anti-caste scholars and activists who live in the United States, where the modern-day elevator was first invented, said that they have observed that service elevators in residential buildings are mainly used to move large and heavy furniture. Tejas Harad, a former Mumbaikar and a doctoral candidate studying alternative media and anti-caste movements at the University of Pennsylvania, said that in his two years in the United States, he had never come across a service elevator for workers. He observed that the elevator was 'an intimate and enclosed space' that had to be shared by individuals from various social groups. 'So for that brief moment, it's like you're on an equal footing,' he said. 'Of course, it doesn't erase people's locations as workers and residents, but symbolically speaking, there's a shattering of inequality that occurs there.' Bernard made similar observations in his book. 'To a certain extent, the elevator democratized access,' he wrote. 'Literally and figuratively, every passenger in the elevator had equal weight.' In India, however, this process is being undermined by the spread of segregated elevators as cities expand vertically at a rapid pace. Anti-caste scholars contend that the phenomenon is a clear manifestation of casteism. 'Most people working as domestic workers or deliverymen come from the Bahujan community,' said a postdoctoral scholar from an Indian Institute of Technology who has conducted research on caste in Mumbai. 'Separate lifts are an attempt to create distance from outcaste bodies, as there is a lot of anxiety about spatial density in cities. This is how the spatial segregation from earlier times continues in cities today.' The scholar requested anonymity as his department had not authorised him to speak to the media. Harad observed that outside the lift, the only time when rich upper caste people and lower caste individuals came into contact with each other was in contexts when the former were serving the latter. 'In those spaces, the class distinction and relational dynamic is very clear,' he said. 'But in the lift, for a very brief moment, class and caste distinction is threatened. Maintaining those boundaries and separation is important for upper-caste groups.' Said Disha Wadekar, a lawyer, ''Caste is a chimera, it keeps adapting to the times. The spread of segregated service elevators is a prime example of such adaptation.' Harad added, 'What does it say about you that you can't share space with a lower-caste person even for such a brief period of time? That your caste and class position gets threatened by that brief encounter?' This story is part of Common Ground, our in-depth and investigative reporting project. Sign up here to get the stories in your inbox soon after they are released. O n June 25, I met 12 domestic workers in Andheri who are associated with Prayas Ek Koshish, an NGO, and a part of the Maharashtra Rajya Gharelu Kamgar Samanvay Samiti, a state domestic workers' organisation. All of them worked in four or five houses every day, and visited at least one building where they were made to use service elevators. Several workers said that the segregation of elevators was an attack on their basic rights. 'It's a question of time and dignity,' said Mangala Bavaskar, a former president of the Gharelu Kamgar Vikas Vastistar Sangh, another state domestic workers' organisation.'If we're allowed inside their homes to clean and cook their food, then why can't we use the same lifts as them? Why should we wait longer for separate lifts to go to the same houses?' Delivery workers also voiced similar ire. 'Those living in high-rise buildings are all crorepatis,' said Abdul Malik, a deliveryman based in Navi Mumbai. 'They don't consider us to be human. Our time and struggle don't matter. We only exist to serve them.' Some residents of buildings also expressed objections to such rules, though they said that they were always argued down when they tried to raise their concerns within their housing societies. All residents mentioned in the story requested that their names and their building names be withheld because they feared incurring the wrath of their neighbours. 'These are people who look after us, our kids and our houses,' said Smriti, a resident of a 14-storey building in Bandra. 'They're central to our lives. To look at them as less than human, it doesn't sit well with me.' These residents are offered various justifications for the restrictions, which they said they found flawed. One common argument made was that the use of service elevators helped save time. 'My building's society argues that in the morning rush hour, lifts get too crowded with schoolchildren and office workers, so segregating the lifts for workers makes things more efficient,' said Priya, a resident of a 40-storey building in Dadar. 'But this implies that our time is more important than theirs, which is unfair, since their jobs and lives are way more precarious.' Another argument residents heard was that the use of service elevators was necessary to ensure women's safety in the building societies. Janaki, a young woman who lives in a high-rise in Lokhandwala Complex, recounted that members of her society claimed that workers, especially deliverymen, might stare at, or even molest women and children. 'This is definitely about caste and class,' she said. 'Why is unsafety always assigned to marginalised men? There are enough creepy uncles in the building too, who make people feel unsafe.' The IIT scholar echoed this view. 'To say that women in the building are only under threat from outside men is to assume that they are safe from the men inside their homes and buildings,' he said. 'They aren't.' Further, Janaki noted, if there were indeed concerns of safety, the use of service elevators entirely overlooked the safety of women workers. 'This also suggests that it's okay to make women workers feel unsafe,' she said. Some residents were also appalled to hear fellow society members argue that service lifts were necessary because workers' bodies stink. Domestic workers argued that this reasoning was not only dehumanising but essentially self-fulfilling. Namrata, a domestic worker from Andheri, recounted that she used to work in a building that had 20 floors, and where workers were not allowed to use elevators at all. 'My employer lived on the seventeenth floor, so I would climb up all the way there,' she said. 'It would take me around 15 to 20 minutes just to climb. When I would ask why I can't take the lift, they would say it's because you stink. But if I was allowed to take the lift, I wouldn't sweat so much in the first place.' Lawyer Disha Wadekar explained that although the practice of segregating elevators was deeply discriminatory, workers may not yet have a clearly established legal remedy against it because the jurisprudence on 'indirect discrimination' is still at a nascent stage in India. However, she noted, they might be able to rely on certain constitutional provisions if they approached courts against the practice. According to 'constitutional jurisprudence', Wadekar said, the practice can be viewed as 'indirect discrimination and a violation of horizontal rights', a term that refers to individuals' rights in relationships with private entities. She noted that article 15(2) of the Indian Constitution lists several spaces where discrimination is banned, including shops, restaurants, hotels, roads and 'places of public resort or dedicated to use of general public' that she said referred to 'places that the public can access'. Although elevators are not specifically mentioned in the clause, Wadekar argued that the intent of the clause was clear, and that a 'private space having public access, such as a building elevator, can be read into Article 15(2) as a 'place of public resort dedicated to the use of general public''. Thus, she argued, 'segregation in building elevators can be made actionable'. Despite this, the law's application to discrimination involving elevators could become ambiguous, she noted, because while most workers might belong to Bahujan communities, workers as a group are not a specifically protected category. 'There is a need for a detailed study showing that majority of the workers accessing these elevators belong to Bahujan communities,' she said. T he discrimination against workers is also evident in the fact that service elevators are typically of lower standards than residential ones. While they are usually larger, workers also noted that in many buildings service elevators were slower and older than residential elevators, and would also often malfunction or break down. Manju, a domestic worker from Malad, said that in a high-rise tower she worked at, the service elevator had plywood interiors, whereas the residential ones had metal interiors. The former 'keeps breaking down all the time', she said. 'When that happens, we are allowed to use the residential elevators which are faster.' In a similar vein, Smriti, the Bandra resident, said that the residential elevator in her building was an automatic one with metal doors whereas the service elevator was an older one with grill doors. 'It takes an age for that elevator to come,' she said. 'Often, they're stuck downstairs for ten to 15 minutes. When the service lift breaks down, they're allowed to use the regular elevator. Then nobody has a problem with workers taking their elevator, because they need their work.' Mabel, the journalist who also lives in Bandra, said in an email that in her building, which is around three years old and has four general-use elevators, the move towards designating one as the service elevator began by first assigning it for use only to move heavy equipment and construction material. 'Initially, it was just a lift that was equipped for heavy usage,' she said, noting that this included for the transport of garbage bins. She added, 'This service elevator was also protected with plywood interiors so as not to damage the lift.' Construction workers and deliverymen were instructed to enter this lift from the basement and not the airconditioned lobby, which seemed reasonable to her because it was easier to load heavy material from the basement. 'However, about a year ago, we received a directive that all household staff, including housemaids and nannies, were to use this service lift and also enter from the basement,' she said. 'We were aghast, since the lift was being used very heavily and was always dirty because of dust and paan-spitting, and was always full of men, which made maids uncomfortable.' Several residents and tenants opposed this move, which led to a showdown on the society's Whatsapp group. Those who were in favour of all workers using the service lift said that this was how it is in 'all premium buildings'. On the other hand, those against the move said that it was 'discriminatory in general' and 'certainly not premium behaviour', Mabel wrote. But the latter group was outvoted and the rule was imposed. In rare instances, workers push back against their employers or their housing societies. Lalita, a domestic worker recounted that in May, she waited three hours for a broken-down service lift in a building she worked at to be repaired. 'All of us workers were standing or sitting near the service elevator outside for hours as residents easily went up and down,' she said. 'It was the last stop for my morning, so I didn't mind waiting a bit, but after three hours I was exhausted.' Lalita and others phoned their employers and asked how much longer they should wait. 'Finally, the guards allowed us to use the residential lifts,' she said. Workers recounted that the segregation of elevators began to be particularly stringently enforced during the pandemic. In Thane East, Chaya, a domestic worker, recounted that she and others protested when the building they worked at tried to extend the policy even after the pandemic. 'They continued the separation for the lifts for a year later,' Chaya said. 'But all of us workers got together and took a stance, so they had to finally stop the segregation.' A part from separate elevators, some buildings also have separate entrances and pathways for workers. Such restrictions often emerge from rules pertaining to elevators. In some high-rise towers, for instance, residential elevators are accessed from air-conditioned lobbies, whereas service elevators are accessed from outside the building. 'All the elevators go to the same floors. But residents can walk straight in from the reception area and go up, whereas we have to go around the reception,' Manju said. 'Many times, the deliverymen get lost, as you have to go around from the back to reach the service elevator.' Janaki explained that her building in Lokhandwala has five wings set in the shape of a horseshoe. While workers are allowed to directly enter the first two buildings on the right and left from the gate, they have to take circuitous paths to reach the three in the middle. 'The society's pool and gym are located right before those buildings, so residents can cut through that area to access their buildings,' she said. 'But workers have separate pathways covered with a hedge so that they keep out from those common areas.' Some buildings have such restrictions even though their elevators are not segregated. In 2023, in a high-rise society at Thane, workers suddenly found themselves barred from using the basement entrance to the elevators and the building. They were told to access the elevators from the upper floor, situated atop an elevated slope. 'This society is nice, they don't have separate elevators for workers, but the changed rules for separate entrances just don't make sense,' said Rupali. Instead of reaching the elevators immediately upon entering the society, workers now had to climb the steep slope to the other entrance. 'It takes about five more minutes to reach the elevators now,' Rupali said. 'It's okay for younger workers, but the older ones struggle to catch their breath while climbing the slope. In the rains, moss starts growing on the pathway and it gets slippery too.' Annoyed at the new arbitrary rules, workers decided to get together and speak to the housing society's board and their employers. Both blamed the other for the new rule. Workers also approached Rekha Jadhav, the local coordinator for the National Domestic Workers Movement. 'I tried speaking to the society office people and reasoning with them,' she told Scroll. 'I even approached the local MLA about it, and he said he would look into it, but nothing changed. The rules are arbitrary, and they make no sense. They do these things with the workers just because they can.' Workers and residents noted that the separation of elevators and spaces in building societies had also led to uncomfortable situations in which gate watchmen surveilled and profiled anyone who entered. 'It creates a system where the watchmen are literally eyeballing people and making a snap judgement on who takes which lift,' Mabel wrote. She recounted observing an incident two years ago in which security guards at an elite mall in central Mumbai denied entry to their neighbours from their own working-class locality. 'This is a subplot that really bothers me,' she wrote. 'What does this do to your brain?' Mabel also noted that across Mumbai, many security agency personnel were Brahmin men, or at least that they wore Brahmin signifiers like the tuft of hair at the back of the head. The IIT scholar confirmed this observation. In his observations in the suburbs of Khar, Bandra and Juhu, he had come across several Brahmin security guards. 'A lot of them get these jobs through wealthier members in their caste networks,' he said. 'They get pride in surveilling and controlling bodies. They have a habit of doing this in rural areas, and in these elite buildings they get to do this within cities too.' Ahmad Sayyed recalled a day in late June, when he was making deliveries drenched in torrential rain. At one building, where residents and workers use the same elevator, a security guard asked him to take off his rainwear before entering the elevator, even as a resident, who was also wearing a dripping raincoat, walked in without the guard raising any objections. 'Security guards behave very rudely with us,' he said. 'Sometimes they make up random rules to inconvenience us. They like ordering us around.' In some instances, guards mistakenly assume that residents or their house guests are workers. 'Some of us who don't use cars very often have been directed to the basement along with the workers,' Mabel wrote. Guards' racist attitudes often come to the surface as in the case of one of her neighbours, who 'is of African descent and was repeatedly sent to the basement', she wrote. Conversely, some workers avoid being segregated because they present an appearance that is closer to the typical idea of an upper-caste and upper-class individual. 'My husband's driver dresses well and looks like any other person who lives in the building,' said Pooja, who lives in Oshiwara. 'So he's never asked to take the service lift. In the end it's all up to the watchmen to decide who gets sent where.' This process of surveillance and segregation revealed deep-seated prejudices towards characteristics such as skin colour, deportment, clothes and language, the scholar noted. He added, 'It's all deeply entrenched in us, and we see this play out in who gets to use which elevator.'
