Savitri Devi has been searching for work since she lost her job at a garment factory in New Delhi, along with half her co-workers, when sales plummeted at the start of the coronavirus pandemic last year.

The 44-year-old has tried her luck repeatedly — and unsuccessfully — near her home in Okhla, an industrial hub with thousands of small factories and workshops, where there was previously plenty of unskilled jobs for women.

"I am ready to take a salary cut, but there is no work," Devi said outside her one-room home in a slum of about 100 families, just a few miles away from Prime Minister Narendra Modi's office.

Devi is one of around 15 million Indians who have been made redundant in an economic slowdown that has hit women disproportionately, trade union and industry leaders said.

Most employed women in India are in low-skilled work, such as farm and factory labour and domestic help, in sectors that have been hit hard by the pandemic.

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