Waiting Out the Lockdown on a Ration That Arrived
The Rajendran family
Four adults, no work for eleven weeks, and a relief list they were not on. How the gap was found and closed.
- 11
- weeks of support
- 340
- households reached
- 9
- days to first delivery
Placeholder story. Replace with a real account recorded with the participant's consent before launch.
The households that relief reaches last are the ones that appear on no list: migrant workers, informal tenants, families who moved recently.
Finding who was missing
We stopped working from official lists and started working from landlords, shopkeepers and the drivers who knew which buildings had gone quiet. It was slower and considerably more accurate.
What was delivered
Dry rations for a fortnight at a time, repeated for eleven weeks, plus cooking fuel — the item most often left out of a relief kit and the one that makes the rest of it usable.
Afterwards
Three of the four adults are back in work. The family is now registered, which means the next time the lists are drawn they will be on them.
What we took from it
An official list is a starting point, not a map of need.
“We were not registered anywhere. That is why nobody came.”