India, June 6 -- Gulshan wraps herself in a wet dupatta and tries to sleep.

It is sizzling in the roughly 25-square foot room where she lives with her husband and four children. A tiny fan circulates hot air in the still room on the topmost floor of a ramshackle narrow building in Sunder Nagari in north-east Delhi. There's a small open terrace where Gulshan cooks - on firewood since gas cylinders are both unavailable and unaffordable. She asks me to touch a steel utensil. It feels as hot as if she has just taken it off a flame.

Like many women in the locality, Gulshan, whose husband drives a rented auto-rickshaw, takes on poorly-paid piecemeal work. Every extra bit counts. But her work - sewing pockets on cosmetic pouches for Rs.5 per p...