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INDIA’S FORSAKEN Stories of poverty in a transforming nation INDIA’S FORSAKEN Stories of poverty in a vibrant nation

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Page 1: India Forsaken

INDIA’S FORSAKENStories of poverty in a transforming nation

INDIA’S FORSAKEN

Stories of poverty in a vibrant nation

Page 2: India Forsaken

INDIA’S FORSAKENSTORIES OF POVERTY IN A VIBRANT NATION

A DEPTH REPORT FROM THE UNIVERSITY OF NEBRASKA–LINCOLN’S COLLEGE OF

JOURNALISM AND MASS COMMUNICATIONS

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A woman walks along the banks of the Yamuna near the Old Yamuna Bridge, a decaying, rusted heap of iron in north New Delhi. The river’s inky, tortured water mixes with trash in pools along the side for a toxic-looking brew.

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RIVER 3

PHOTOS & STORY BY DAN HOLTMEYER

DELHI’S FALLENGODDESS

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Traffic honked and shouted its way, as it did every day, across the Old Iron Bridge. The Yamuna River’s black, opaque water drifted under the bridge, smoothly reflecting the sky and speckled with inch-wide bubbles. Its smell, like rubber burning in a sewer, penetrated dust and traffic to reach nostrils two blocks away.

Then something larger broke through the water: 24-year-old Chuman Miya surfaced for air, his face slick with the river’s oil his shoulders invisible just

below the water. His hands appeared and sorted through a clump of sludge before tossing it away – nothing this time.

Miya glanced over at the dirt island surrounding a bridge’s pillar, which acted as the base camp for the dozen other boys and men who came each day to swim, boat and fish with magnets in search of a few dol-lars of coins and sellable scraps all day, every day. Their eyes are yellowed and their hands blackened by the river as if they dug up coal instead of metal.

The Yamuna swoops through northern India, linking Hima-layan glaciers to the Ganges River one of the world’s largest rivers and as sacred to Hindus as Jerusalem is to Christians, Jews and Muslims. About one-third the way down, it crosses diagonally through New Delhi, a metropolis of more than 20 million people.

Named after the sister of the god of death, the Yamuna River is revered as a goddess and prominent figure in ancient Hindu stories. Every few min-utes, another pilgrim tosses in marigold garlands, god figures, family pictures, sequined cloth or rupee coins – a Hindu

tradition to secure a blessing from Yamuna. Even Muslims toss in their own coins for luck.

Today the sister of death is dying. Religious tokens aren’t the only human addition to Yamuna’s waters. According to the New Delhi government, one billion gallons of sewage are piped into the river daily, joining industrial wastewater, chemicals and heavy metals like lead and mercury. The toxic river stands as a monument to India’s meteoric population growth and development dur-ing the past several decades as it tries to exit the developing world.

“(Pollution) is all the river has” after it enters the city, said Nitya Jacob, programme direc-tor for water at the Delhi-based Center for Science and Envi-ronment (CSE), which focuses on environmental research and related policy.

There’s no fresh water, despite decades and billions of rupees in cleanup efforts – only a “cocktail” of sewage and chem-istry devoid of life remains, Jacob said.

“The river is dead,” said Sunita Narain, CSE’s director, in a 2007 interview with Fortune

Dust floated in the ashen sky. The sun blasted down on New Delhi, India’s capital, like a furnace. May brought the end of the dry season – a month of no rain and daily temperatures of 110 degrees Fahrenheit and up.

China

YamunaGange s

Bangladesh

Delhi

RIVER SOURCE: Yamunotri in the Himalayas; seat of the Goddess Yamuna LENGTH: 851 mi COVERAGE: Uttaranchal, Uttar Pradesh, Himachal Pradesh, Haryana, Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh, DelhiCITIES: Delhi, Agra, Allahabad

• Considered to be one of the most sacred rivers, along with the Ganges

• Goddess Yamuna is the daughter of Surya, the Sun God, and the sister of Yama, God of Death

• More directly connected to Lord Krishna, the most powerful incarnation of the god Vishnu, than the Ganges River

SOURCE

The Yumana River

FALLEN GODDESS

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Two men scour the river from makeshift rafts, fishing for coins with magnets the size of hand weights. Many of the men are fathers and say they have no other way to make a living, at least for now.

A man sorts through bags and other trash on Yamuna’s banks, looking for coins or other sellable trinkets. Passersby on a nearby bridge throw money, religious images, coconuts and other offerings into the river, leaving the banks choked with trash.

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Magazine. “It just has not been officially cremated.”

Despite the dire diagnosis, residents of riverside neigh-borhoods, slums and farms continue to make their living from this “dead” river, and the city relies on it for much of its water supply. This dependence is one piece of Yamuna’s irony: Indians worship the river as a goddess for help but are steadily killing it. Many depend on it for their livelihoods and the Yamuna is hurting them back.

Further down the east bank, several farmer families main-tained pens of cattle and foot-ball field-sized plots of green beans, chilies and the knobby, bright green karela gourds. Birds chirped; traffic and

trains rumbled and honked. A creek of run-off water flowed from the farms to the Yamuna infused with dust, cow manure and pesticides.

In a farmer’s home with a thatched roof and tarp walls, a farmer and his customer were arguing.

Raj Rani, a young woman in a turquoise and pink sari, wagged a finger at the leathery, deeply lined face and mourn-ful-looking eyes of Banny Miya (no relation to Chuman), wield-ing one cucumber in her other hand. Several pounds of squash and karela were bundled on the dirt floor, their price still undecided.

The haggling increased in intensity; neither looked like backing down. Finally, Rani handed over one 500-rupee note, her lips clamped together.

Banny and his family – a wife, son and three daughters – had grown and harvested the vegetables by hand on a farm they’d leased for a year for 12,000 rupees, or about $240. Its edge bumped against the Ya-muna’s banks. The kids didn’t go to school because the family couldn’t afford it – not that they wanted to anyway.

Rani and one other customer sustained the Miya farming business, which in turn sus-tained her own – she took the vegetables to sell at a market at

the crux of the bridge and the bustling Swami Ganesh Datt Road.

Banny’s family sometimes used the river’s inky contents for their farm; neither Rani nor the family saw that as a prob-lem. But they wouldn’t touch the river themselves, and he admitted he couldn’t grow wa-termelons here because of it.

A recent two-year study from the Delhi-based Energy and Re-sources Institute found unsafe levels of lead, mercury, chro-mium and other heavy metals in the river, the soil nearby and the vegetables grown in it. UNICEF sponsored the study, which concluded in 2012.

In some locations, mercury lev-els were 200 times safe limits, the study found. Such heavy metals are known to damage the development and function

THE RIVER IS DEAD. IT JUST HAS NOT BEEN OFFICIALLY CREMATED.”

Banny harvests string beans on one of his fields, the Old Yamuna Bridge visible behind him.

RIVER TO PLATE

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of almost every body system, particularly the nervous system and brain, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Con-trol and Prevention. One-fifth of the children near the river, researchers concluded, showed unsafe blood lead levels.

Irrigating with Yamuna water was no concern for Rani and the other farmers, market ven-dors and shoppers.

“Everyone likes these veg-etables,” Rani said. “That’s why I’m here.”

Banny was about 60, he said, and while his permanent home was now 200 miles to the northeast in Uttar Pradesh, he was born nearby, across the river. He’d come back not out of religious devotion but to lease the land for the season.

Banny and his family were Mus-lim, but that didn’t mean they didn’t have a certain regard for Yamuna.

“Both religions have the same respect for the river,” he said. “They pray at the river and throw stuff in. We don’t do it that way; we pray to it, but differently.” Any farmer along the Yamuna respects the river because a crop’s fate rests in its annual temper. In June and July, air from the Indian

Ocean collides with warmer air trapped over India by the Himalayas, unleashing one of the world’s most powerful monsoons.

Everything around the old bridge will likely flood, recharg-ing the fields with silt and nu-trients, along with heavy metals and other contaminants.

Babi Devi, a middle-aged woman whose farm near the bridge ran next to the candy- striped Sai Baba Temple, lost her crop for the past three years to those floods.

“Hopefully not this year,” she said as she shuffled down rows

of chili plants that looked like tiny trees in a miniature forest.

Stooping, Devi patted bean seeds into the dirt with a

trowel, her fingers stained red from the M&M-sized seeds. Move a foot forward, another pat. Her red bangles jingled with each tap, keeping a steady beat across the field. The beat paused now and then as Devi tucked her headscarf back into the front of her dress.

While Banny irrigated from the Yamuna sparingly, Devi regular-ly pumped its water into shallow canals around her square plots. She recognized the stain of pol-lution but, like the others, was unconcerned by watering food with the caustic water.

“Even with that, our respect and sense of devotion is always the same,” Devi said, Farmers gather regularly at the temple and offer fruits and other items, thrown into the water “to please the river.”

A market for crops grown along the water convenes most evenings near the Old Yamuna Bridge in northern New Delhi. Virtually none of the buyers or sellers mind the use of Yamuna’s polluted water for food, though studies of that food have found mercury, lead and other toxic substances at levels far beyond any safe limit.

INDIANS WORSHIP THE RIVER AS A GODDESS FOR HELP BUT ARE STEADILY KILLING IT.

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Saddam’s mother (bottom left) and his aunt, uncle and cousins scrub clothing together one May morning. Thanks to India’s location in the tropics, the temperature could surpass 90 degrees Fahrenheit before midmorning.

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Hajara Miya, Banny Miya’s wife, talks with her mother one morning as the two harvest bitter gourds, or karela in Hindi. Hajara’s three children also help out instead of going to school, which they say they can’t afford and don’t want.

“It has nothing to do with its cleanliness,” she said.

Back at the Miya household, Hajara Miya, the mother, prepared dinner as the hazy sky darkened. She poked a dried plant stalk at the tiny earthen oven’s crackling fire. A round silver pot held boiling potatoes above it.

Her teenage daughter Shara squatted nearby, mixing flour and water in a wide, shallow bowl and squeezing the dough with her fingers. Shara glanced at her mother with a bashful smile every few minutes for pointers. Her younger sister hid in the back of the hut where painted flowers adorned the earthen portions of the walls.

On the other side of a blue tarp wall from Hajara, her husband sat, saying little, smoking a ciga-

rette and watching the bridge’s always-noisy traffic go by. The Yamuna’s opaque surface, dark in the falling light, was just visible over the banks 50 yards behind him.

Hajara had never seen the Yamuna clean, but her husband had.

“I could drink it right out of my hands,” Banny said, cupping his hands together to demonstrate. “Nowadays, all of the (sewage) drains are going to the river. That’s totally spoiling it.”

“The water I used to drink I can’t go near now,” he said, shaking his head. “It’s painful.”

About 10 miles downstream from the Old Iron Bridge,

17-year-old Saddam Khatom swung a sudsy pair of jeans against the inclined concrete bank of a Yamuna off-shoot canal. The staccato smacks rang out like gunshots. He stood ankle-deep in the gray water surrounded by ripples, which rocked a few scraps of trash and buoyant plants drifting by.

Saddam paused between blows, kneading the cloth against the cement and squeezing out bleach and Fena-brand soap bubbles between his fingers. The caustic fluid trickled be-neath him back to the river. He wore a dark orange plaid shirt and black slacks, some acne dotted his face, and his eyes were bright.

Voices sounded from overhead. Saddam laughed softly, squint-ing up the bank in the morn-ing glare at his aunt and his

mother, Momina, who worked a soup-like mixture of cloth, water and soap in a bucket. Her tongue poked out in concentra-tion. The bunch often talks about other family members and plans for the future, they said, but at this moment teas-ing Saddam about getting a girlfriend soon was more fun.

Several families of clothes-wash-ers, dobiwallahs, were at work after hauling formless blobs of saris, bed sheets and other gar-ments from their homes to the Yamuna for a thorough scrub-bing. Washing machines are a lofty luxury. Kids joined their parents, aunts and uncles in the work, sometimes splashing each other or swinging jeans in faces.

To get the most dust out, the dobiwallahs said, they smack the shirt or pair of jeans against

FAMILY BUSINESS

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Saddam stands over his cousin’s bike, overloaded with clothing for washing, near the Yamuna canal. Escaping this living and becoming an engineer like Saddam wants remains a desperate challenge for many in his social position -- the vast majority of students in India don’t make it to college, and Saddam admitted he didn’t know for sure how he would pay for it.

Saddam Khatom, 17, washes jeans and other clothes on a canal that juts from the Yamuna River, a sacred and exceptionally polluted river that cuts through the heart of New Delhi, India’s capital. His parents, aunts and uncles have washed clothes as a living for decades, but Saddam wants to go to school, become a civil engineer and do “something famous,” he said.

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the concrete banks – Saddam with more vigor than most of his neighbors – a drumbeat that mixes with grunts of effort.

“We’re content to work here,” said Firoja Khatom, Saddam’s aunt, echoing most of the other parents. “We can’t make our living if we don’t wash these clothes in the river.”

Kids sometimes jumped into the water, but most of the adults bathed at home, wary of skin sores and disease, Saddam said.

Saddam shared their caution but not their contentedness. His father, Ishaq, had worked this job for 25 years; his mother, 16. Saddam wanted to be a civil engineer and do “something famous.”

“If I continue this job, I’ll just be stuck like my parents,” he

said in his family’s two-room home. Outside the door was a dusty alley of Shaheen Bagh, a cluster of apartment buildings within walking distance of the canal. “It’s only enough for us to live, to fulfill our daily needs. So life is just going like this. I want something different.”

He spoke as he ironed clothes on a table in the main room – where the family also slept – stretching and folding with precise, quick movements. An old fan bolted to the ceiling squeaked a foot above his head. Most days are spent ironing.

The TV set in the corner of two worn, pink walls displayed an episode of “Man vs. Wild,” the favorite show of Mohammed Saif, an 8-year-old neighbor who flitted in and out of the Khatom door like an adopted little brother.

Momina, Saddam’s mother, worked at another table outside against one of the walls, some-times chatting and laughing with passing neighbors and the shopkeepers across the street. Bicycle vendors called out “Pani!” – water – in stretched-out syllables. Apartments reared over the maze of alleys, blocking out direct sunlight and housing shopkeepers, workers and some 50 other washer families.

His 10th-class year over, Sad-dam’s summer holidays from school had begun. So he ironed. Less than one-fifth on India’s kids graduate high school, but to become a civil engineer Saddam would have to start by getting a diploma. Then he’d have to go to college, something his family admit-tedly cannot afford. Saddam said he’s counting on a network

of far-flung relatives to finance the loans.

“We’ll just try to support him,” Momina said outside, as the coal rattled in her iron.

Momina had never seen a clean river, and Yamuna hadn’t been drinkable in Sad-dam’s lifetime. Ishaq had seen it 25 years ago, however, after leaving a bakery business and taking up his father’s work.

“It was clean when I started,” Ishaq said. Now, the govern-ment and other organizations figuratively skimmed the river’s surface once or twice a year. Nothing changes for long.

“It’s very sad to see,” Ishaq said. “It’s better to work

A BETTER RIVER

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in clean water, but there is none.”

Indeed, the work of the govern-ment, dozens of NGOs and roughly 5 billion rupees ($100 million) has gone into Yamuna cleanup efforts over the past two decades, and the water is as resolutely black as ever. The government is now gearing up for the Yamuna Action Plan Phase 2, or YAP-II, after the lackluster results of YAP-I.

The Indian government says the first phase had not focused enough on Delhi’s 10-mile stretch and on public aware-ness and mobilization. Nitya Jacob, the water program director at CSE, also pinned the blame to an overemphasis of building new sewage treat-ment plants instead of getting sewage to those plants.

“Therefore, you have this huge volume of practically raw sew-age,” Jacob said. “Then you’re back to square one.”

All but one of 45 people living and earning along the river said it should be cleaned, though the divers and trash-pickers pointed out their dependence on the city’s waste.

“We want a better life,” said Gauri Singh, a fiery 25-year-old mother of two who sometimes collected trash near the Old Iron Bridge with her mother-in-law. “But who cares? Nothing changes. Nothing changes in our life.”

Still, Jacob saw some hope with YAP-II, which he said would focus more on sewer infrastruc-ture to start diverting pollution at its source. He guessed signifi-cant progress would come in

the next one or two decades if YAP-II is implemented “prop-erly,” including getting riverside industrial plants in on the game and exploring more ways to purify water.

“It’s a question of pushing the government, the people, the media,” he said. “There’s no shortage of money. It’s more a shortage of public awareness and government will.”

Another morning in late May, bright as always, Saddam Khatom scrubbed and swung clothes at the canal alone. His parents and younger sisters had gone out of the city for two weeks to visit relatives, leaving him and his older brother, who usually worked in a factory, to tackle the flow of laundry.

The temperature had edged into the upper 90s by 9 a.m. Sweat glistened on his lean frame. Still, he scrubbed.

Saddam being able to pay for college, the water below him being clean – both seem un-likely for now. Saddam, how-ever, shared the hope invoked by Jacob.

“India is a very different coun-try than others, but I love it,” he said. “You have to dream.”

A man emerges from the Yamuna River after diving to the bottom in search of valuables. Men and boys along the river dive or throw in magnets from bridges and boats to find coins and other trinkets thrown in by passersby for a blessing from the Hindu goddess Yamuna.

SADDAM’S LOVE

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Rajendara, a homeless drug addict, cries after having a wound cleaned and mended at the Yamuna Bazaar in New Delhi on May 17, 2012.

Without money or his own drugs, Rajendara stole from another user, who then broke a bottle over his arm.

SURVIVE ONE MORE DAY

Rajiv Shaw stands opposite the expatriate from America on the soccer field: fast, strong and aggressive against a hulk of a man rumored to have shared a cell with Charles Manson.

Shaw attempts to slide tackle the expatriate, who doesn’t take it well.

“Forget the football. Let’s take this outside.”

Other players separate Shaw from the Manson cellmate.

A game of football, intended to be a distraction, turns into an almost brawl between recovering addicts.

Thirty years later, Shaw sits in his office in Haus Khas, a middle-class neighborhood in New Delhi. He twirls a pen on his desktop, remembering his days of addic-tion and recovery. He has been heroin-free since the mid-1980s. Now, he helps addicts through the controversial program that helped him: Sharan.

The non-governmental organiza-tion Sharan works to help addicts stay alive rather than get clean. Founded in the early 1980s, Sharan provides users with a place to go for HIV testing, counseling and clean needles.

“We have seen that the only way to fight poverty, hunger, is to use drugs,” Shaw said. “To cope with the normal life … It’s very difficult when you’re not using drugs.”

One of the three drug havens that Sharan serves is across the city ¬– the eighth biggest in the world – at the Yamuna Bazaar, just across a freeway from Red Fort, built in the 17th century by the Mughal Empire. Sharan workers exchange new needles and syringes for the users’ old ones. The motto behind the method is to keep the men alive for one more day.

PHOTOS BY ANDREW DICKINSON STORY BY FRANNIE SPROULS

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“If you want to inject, inject. But can I give you a fresh needle every morning?” Shaw said.

The Sharan workers befriend users spending their days in a dirt park along the Yamuna River and gradually get the users to come into the adjacent center. There, they can seek one-on-one or group counseling. If they have an abscess caused by over-injecting in one area, a dog bite or some other injury, they can seek medical at-tention with Sharan workers. The makeshift triage outfit also tests for tuberculosis, HIV and hepati-tis – all common diseases among India’s heroin users.

“It’s emotionally draining,” Shaw said. “Every day is a challenge.”

Trash littered the ground as groups of addicts gathered under sparse

shade in the Bazaar. They sat in packs of no more than three or four. Some rested against trees and others sat on dirty blankets. Dirt paths wove between patchy grass mounds.

Majob and Salin sat near Sharan’s blue shelter. The pair shared a blanket and a syringe. Manoj pressed his thumb over the injec-tion site on his arm, a slight smile on his face. Salim held a bottle of the pharmaceutical Kavil in his hand, emptying the bottle’s contents into the syringe with the same needle Manoj had used, which would make Shaw cringe.

The drug, produced by both legiti-mate pharmaceutical companies and underground manufacturers on the outskirts of Delhi, increases

the intensity and longevity of a heroin high.

Naresh Samma, an NGO worker for Sharan, shook his head and said the pair shouldn’t be sharing syringes because of the chance of transferring HIV-positive blood. He estimates 30 percent of the park-dwellers have HIV.

“They are very much aware, but they aren’t scared of dying,” Samma said, watching the men shoot up.

Crouched next to Manoj, Salim set the bottle on the ground and took the used needle off the sy-ringe. The needle lay on the white blanket as Salim inserted a new needle. Manoj reached over to put the used needle in a plastic casing.

The needle ready for injection,

Salim turned to Manoj to adminis-ter the heroin.

Deepak helps another drug user inject at the Yamuna Bazaar in New Delhi in May.

TREATMENT

The center once ran a drug treatment program because the organization believes in the continuing treatment – contacting the addicts and bringing them from the streets all the way to employment. After years of treatment and frustration, workers realized homeless users returned to the streets after treatment.

“You provide a person services after treatment and then 15 days later, you see him using drugs again,” Shaw said. “And you really

Deepak helps another drug user inject at the Yamuna Bazaar in New Delhi on May 15, 2012.

IN THE BAZAAR

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can’t blame him for it, nor can you shut the doors on his face, because where else does he go?”

Heroin has a high relapse rate because as an opiate, the reception sites in the brain have a good memory that will never fade.

“You can physically detox, but that really doesn’t mean the memory of dependence is gone,” said Luke Sampson, founder of Sharan.

Sampson and Shaw know that cycle of dependency.

Shaw began taking heroin during the 1970s. He was 20 at the time, but his drug addiction began long before – when he was in high school. He participated in three sports: football, boxing and track. Shaw remembers being one of Delhi’s top three sprinters. He wanted to be No. 1.

A friend came up to him one day, telling Shaw he had found out that a history teacher used Dexedrine to stay awake grading tests. His friend suggested Shaw take Dexedrine, or speed, before his next 100-meter race. Shaw said, “Why not?”

He began popping speed and his times dropped. His football skills improved.

“So that’s how my drug life started,” he said. “Then of course, I moved onto cannabis.”

Soon, Shaw depended on his friend for a cigarette each day. He was 20 and lived in Chandigarh, in the Punjab. For 15 days straight, Shaw smoked this cigarette. He loved this cigarette.

It was summer and his friend hadn’t come by in a day. Shaw felt cold. In his apartment, he wrapped a quilt around his shiver-ing body. His stomach cramped and his eyes watered. He felt weak and couldn’t remember a time when he felt this sick.

His friend walked into the room,

another cigarette in hand.

“Rajiv, what’s happened to you?”

“Sabib, this is some funny kind of fever I’ve got. I need to go and see a doctor.”

“Yeah, take this cigarette.”

The moment Shaw took a drag, he felt like Superman.

“What have you been giving me?”

“This is heroin.”

Shaw was hooked.

SMOKING

Shahnazz crouched next to the wall and reached down to his pant cuffs. He unrolled the fabric, pulling out a matchbox similar to the one next to his feet. Instead of matches, the box held an alumi-num pipe and folded aluminum foil. He pulled both out of the box.

His dirty, worn hands straight-ened the bent pipe. He rolled the aluminum foil between his hands

until it was a perfect cylinder, then he put the pipe between his teeth. A cigarette rested on the rock as he unfolded the aluminum. Shirtless, Shahnazz pulled a thin burlap-colored cloth over his head to create a tent.

On the flat aluminum sheet was a solid, dark brown mass of liquid in the top left corner. . Shahn-azz smoothed the aluminum to create the best surface to chase the heroin across the rectangle, angling the edges up to avoid los-ing any heroin. He reached down and drew a match from the box between his toes and sandals, strik-ing it against the side.

The flame flared as he moved it under the liquid. He held the aluminum at an angle, allowing the melted heroin to run toward the bottom. As the smoke from the brown sugar rose into the air, Shahnazz’s pipe chased the smoke. Once the sugar was at the end, he shook the match to put out the flame.

He threw the match on the ground and reached for the cigarette. Shahnazz took a drag – this would

keep the smoke in his mouth. He repeated this process four or five times, a drag in between each chase. He rarely exhaled.

Before smoking, he took Nitraz-epam tablets, or sleeping pills, to prolong his high. Its label read Euphorra India Pharmaceuticals. These pills were bought through the black market by peddlers, who sell the drugs to users.

Shahnazz had finished his third high of the day and it was not yet noon.

Homeless drug addicts who are a part of the heroin and pharma-ceutical injecting community in the Yamuna Bazaar begin to carry Karan Yadav, a homeless drug user, who died minutes before after overdosing on heroin. A small argument broke out between the family on the roof and a group of other homeless drug addicts on the stairs (not pictured). This is the way many addicts meet their end.

In the 1980s, while living back home during his addiction years, Shaw argued with his father one

Rajiv Shaw

Wasim, a peer educator and outreach worker for the NGO Sharan, holds a metal case con-taining used needles while walking to his outreach post in the field of the Yamuna Bazaar in New Delhi on May 16, 2012.

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day. What it was about, he cannot remember. Perhaps it was over money.

His father told Shaw he had ruined enough.

Shaw stormed up to his room and packed his bag full of clothes. He started toward the door, his bag in his hand. His father stopped him.

“What are you carrying?”

“I’m carrying my clothes.”

“They’re not your clothes. I bought them. You leave this bag here. Then you can get out of here.”

His father’s words struck him hard. He felt small and the words remained in his mind for the next few days.

Shaw was ashamed. His friends, relatives, neighbors and communi-ties talked about him. His parents were embarrassed of him.

He moved from his parents’ house to the streets.

Shaw’s former addiction to drugs, and his recovery, are a big advan-tage in his new job. He knows how a user’s mind works because he’s been there.

The population of drug users is written off in India, Shaw said. They are highly stigmatized, very strongly discriminated. No one tries to understand the users – they are blamed for the situation they are in. Alcohol is a more acceptable poison for Indians.

“It’s not the disease … it’s the stigma that kills,” Samma said.

The tuberculosis hospital doesn’t want a drug user and the general hospital doesn’t want a tuberculo-sis patient.

“So in your mind you think, should I really help this man with tuberculosis, or let him die,

Homeless residents of the Yamuna Bazaar in New Delhi sit against a building as the last of the day’s light fades away on May 16, 2012.

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because he’s going to die anyway?” Shaw said. “It’s part of the frustra-tion you live with.”

And without people like Shaw, drug users find themselves in a situation where they believe noth-ing is going to change for them. They fall into major depressions, regrets clouding their thoughts. They regret losing their families by turning to drugs. And to get rid of their thoughts, they use heroin. It becomes a struggle to stay alive each day – a hopeless situation.

Sharan doesn’t have the funds to run a rehabilitation center, Samma said. But at the Bazaar, there is a shelter for users to spend the night and a harm-reduction program is offered. By keeping them alive, the workers are able to affect, if not change, the users’ lives, Samma said.

Shaw knows this and he knows how to help them.

“I don’t need to do a study of this population to understand what they need because I knew what I needed 30 years back,” Shaw said. “Nothing, really, has changed.”

India’s drug users have shifted from the middle- and upper-class users to the chap on the street, Shaw said.

The drugs have also changed in the past 20 years. Drug users are now injecting pharmaceutical drugs because the cost of heroin has gone up and the quality has gone down. Availability has de-creased.

Shaw remembers Delhi’s streets in the early 1980s.

“People used to queue up for heroin,” he said. “And people didn’t know what was happening. You’d think a bunch of guys were queuing up to buy sugar or rice or something like that.”

Once the price of heroin went

up and quality went down, users adapted through pharmaceutical injecting. Shaw refers to today’s street users as homeless scientists.

He never would have thought of injecting pharmaceuticals, despite his educated background.

“You are talking about people with absolutely, almost zero levels of literacy,” he said. “These are the guys who created these substitutes for themselves.

“They can’t have substandard stuff. If it doesn’t give you a high, then what the hell am I doing it for, you know?”

WOUNDED

Rajendera stumbled past the grills and the cooks flipping the naan watched as Rajendera’s friend leads him toward the abscess treatment room. Blood flowed down his arm, dripping onto the ground from his pinky. He had gotten into a fight. He took another addict’s belongings, and paid for it. The fight resulted in a beer bottle smashing Rajendera’s forearm just above the wrist.

Samma said addicts will share anything but drugs. They gather together under the trees to hide from the sun. They share needles and syringes and help each other inject. They share cheap bidi ciga-rettes. But they know if they have money, it has to be hidden.

Once addicts are high, other users steal their money. So money is given to counselors or workers such as Samma, who act as human savings deposit boxes.

Rajendera sat down on a stool, waiting for the amateur orderly to dress his wound. A cotton swab sat on top of the wound as the worker wiped the blood from his arm and hand. Blood continued to flow once the cotton was removed.

A cloth was placed on the open

wound and the worker began wrapping Rajendera’s arm. By the time the wound was dressed, tears fell slowly down his face.

Outside the room, another addict friend of Rajendera’s used a cotton swab to wipe up the blood drops, which had a 30 percent chance of being HIV positive with maybe a trace of tuberculosis or Hepatitis-C. Samma said he knows of 20 confirmed users with HIV and two with tuberculosis who live at the bazaar.

Rajendera’s friend led him away from the triage center and back to their spot in the shade.

Rajendara, a homeless drug addict, cries after having a wound cleaned and mended at the Yamuna Bazaar in New Delhi May 17, 2012. Without money or his own drugs, Rajendara stole from another user, who broke a bottle over his arm.

THE MARRIAGE

During his addiction, Shaw met Kanchan. It was 1981. He met her in his office and asked her out for coffee. She didn’t like him asking and he continued to ask her for the next three days.

To get rid of him, she told him to go to her house and ask her father for permission.

“To my surprise, I saw him at the door one evening, talking to my dad,” she said. “In the next few minutes, he was inside the house, sitting in the drawing room, chat-ting with my family.”

That night, he left after dinner. Her family liked him. She liked him.

But no one knew of Shaw’s drug addiction.

Shaw married Kanchan in 1985. That’s when she found out he used heroin.

“I was shocked, depressed and felt cheated,” she said.

He began going to rehab in Oct. 1986 and during the next year,

he tried to get clean six or seven times, she said. But he couldn’t.

“That period was the most dif-ficult time because I was slowly los-ing trust in him and started to feel that we would not be able to live together, because of his dishonest lifestyle,” she said.

To Sampson, the founder of Sharan, Shaw and Kanchan’s story is unique. They had a love mar-riage in a culture where arranged marriages are the most common.

“The reason he came to rehab was his marriage was breaking up,” Sampson said. “So he was one of the few people who really came in on an apology basis.”

Shaw couldn’t hide his addiction. Sampson said Shaw was going through five grams a day.

Everything changed for Shaw in 1985.

Jimmy, the younger brother of Shaw’s friend Carl, was working in the gulf area and traveled to Delhi for a holiday. Shaw and Carl used drugs together and had known each other since childhood. They lived together for six months in a government hospital after a serious accident.

Jimmy heard Shaw was using.

On a Sunday at 6:37 a.m., Jimmy walked into Shaw’s house and told Shaw’s parents everything. He recommended a place for Shaw to go – Carl had gone through a program called Sharan. Perhaps it would work for Shaw.

“And from there, my life changed,”

I DON’T NEED TO DO A STUDY OF THIS POPULATION TO UNDERSTAND WHAT THEY NEED BECAUSE I KNEW WHAT I NEEDED 30 YEARS BACK.

• World’s largest producer of licit opium for the pharmaceutical trade

• Transit point for illicit narcotics produced in neighboring coun-tries and throughout Southwest Asia

• Illicit producer of methaqualone

CIA FACTBOOK

DRUGS IN INDIA

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Shaw said. “I think, the day Jimmy walked into my house that Sunday morning and told my dad about my heroin use, he did the right thing.

“Today I can see that it was done purely out of concern and welfare of my family and me. … Had he not done this to me, – maybe I would have never made it.”

Shaw will always remember the day he moved in to Sharan: Oct. 22, 1985.

He had consistently failed in treat-

ment. This time, he wouldn’t fail.

Shaw used boxing to beat his ad-diction, at least at the beginning.

“It think probably the sixth or seventh time I saw him, he was all beaten up,” Sampson said. “He got it into his head that he wanted to get back into boxing.”

He was determined to take part in the Delhi Open Boxing Cham-pionship 30 days after he quit heroin. His opponent was the Delhi University boxing captain.

“I don’t think Rajiv managed to hit him even once. Instead, he got hammered nicely and returned to the rehab center all bashed up,” his wife said. “But we all admired and respected the guts and deter-mination he had showed.”

Sampson laughed when he re-membered Shaw’s fight against the boxing captain.

“He was so bad (when) he came back,” he said. “He gave up boxing and got into football.”

Most of Shaw’s rehab time focused

on football. He played in matches, and he organized and led sideline meetings.

When he started treatment at Sharan, Shaw had hardly any weight and he used to be a 100-me-ter sprint champion. This made him really fast, really good and strong, Sampson said.

“He’d kick really hard, rattle the goalposts, kind of thing,” Samp-son said, “but he had aggressive temperaments … I’d have to put him away. I’d say, ‘Cool down and smoke a cigarette. Chill out.’ ”

Blood pours down the hand of Rajendara, a man who was attacked after stealing drugs from another user, while he gets the wound cleaned by an NGO worker at the Yamuna Bazaar in New Delhi on May 17, 2012.

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After three months of detox, Shaw was a different person – full of life and energy, honest and kind to the rehab staff, his wife said. Through football, Shaw was able to regain a healthy lifestyle, which made her feel secure in their relationship.

“I think I fell in love with Rajiv again,” she said. “It was almost like he had found something very valuable that he had lost some

time back.”

Rajiv Shaw reflects on his story and how it continually teaches him how to connect to the heroin addicts of New Delhi, and keep them alive.

Shaw has been clean for almost 30 years. He is a counselor at the NGO Sharan, which helped him recover. Some days, he goes to the

Yamuna Bazaar to check in with the operation. But not often.

He takes what he’s learned in his past and from his time working with Sharan leaders before him and applies it to his work.

“This is not a job for me. This is a part of my life,” he said. “That comes from within, and it’s also there because of the past I’ve gone

through, the broken phase of my life. I try to share everything that I have.”

The NGO Sharan is not just a project for him. When he’s driving home or driving somewhere and sees a drug user, his mind immedi-ately thinks of ways to talk to the user. He knows them even if he doesn’t know them.

Two homeless drug users lay passed out after injecting three doses each of a heroin-pharmaceutical mixture throughout the day at the Yamuna Bazaar in New Delhi on May 18, 2012.

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“You can’t forget them,” Shaw said. “They will never go away from your lives. You’ll always do what you can.”

At home, he drinks a Kingfisher beer. Sometimes whiskey.

If he’s with a close friend, he’ll smoke some cannabis every now and then, he admits.

“I like being naughty,” he said. “I wouldn’t survive otherwise. No chance.”

He doesn’t drink in isolation to unwind. When his two grown daughters are at home, Shaw drinks as he sits and watches TV with them. He joins their discus-sions about hopes and dreams.

If no one is watching, he turns the

channel to sports – more specifi-cally, football. He loves to watch Barcelona and his favorite player changes with how they play. Messi is all over the place, in his opin-ion.

“These people are like magi-cians,” Shaw said. “They have just changed the standard of football. It’s amazing.”

One thing Shaw has been careful about: He does not bring his work home. He brings his briefcase home, but he doesn’t open it. He doesn’t need to open it. He knows users without the papers or the computer. He know them with a drink in his hand, or a cigarette between his lips.

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Homeless drug addicts who are a part of the heroin and pharmaceutical injecting community in the Ya-muna Bazaar begin to carry Karan Yadav, a homeless drug user, who died minutes before after overdosing on heroin. A small argument broke out between the family on the roof and a group of other homeless drug addicts on the stairs (not pictured). This is the way many addicts meet their end.

YOU CAN’T FORGET THEM. THEY WILL NEVER GO AWAY FROM YOUR LIVES. YOU’LL ALWAYS DO WHAT YOU CAN.

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HIGHRISE

HELP-

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31DOMESTIC HELP

Rhianna Bibi stretches her arms to return washed glasses back to their shelf inside the Mohan

family’s apartment.

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The divide between the very rich and the very poor in the city of Gurgaon is distinct. The slums with the poorest residents brush up against the 15-story high rises. The looming shadow of the apart-ments of the upper class cast a shadow over the slums at the start and end of each day. Gurgaon is a city India is pushing forward as a face of the country becoming a world power.

While it may look pretty in pic-tures, plenty is wrong with what is being built in Gurgaon. All the construction is privatized, with no government intervention into how roads, shopping malls, apartments and even sewage systems are built. Roads bend in hairpins, causing traffic jams during rush hours and waste lies stagnant on the road-sides. Pigs lie in the sewage water as kids play cricket nearby.

Even as a city moving forward, the culture in India is long-lived and well-followed. While the middle class in India is growing,

the division of wealth between the rich and the poor is also grow-ing economically and, in a way, physically. There are an estimated 90 million domestic workers in India. This part of Indian culture affects nearly every home across the country and shapes Indian society.

Domestic work is a custom and tradition in Indian homes. Many Indians believe their domestic worker is necessary to keep their home in order. Wealthy Indians may have five or six domestic workers helping keep their homes clean and food cooked. The idea of having a domestic worker is like the idea of having a dog or cat in the United States — eventually a household gets one. This tradi-tion keeps many domestic workers separated from their own families for years at a time. These men and women work, squatting on hands and knees, to send back as many rupees as they can back home, in hopes their own children won’t have to do the same.

WHERE WEALTH MEETS POVERTY

PHOTOS & STORY BY MATT MASIN

Children play cricket at their slum in Gurgaon, India. Cricket is the most popular sport in India, despite field hockey being the national sport.

Games of cricket can break out anywhere as long as there are two people to play together.

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33DOMESTIC HELP

Gurgaon, India, was nothing more than a desert with a small population just a decade ago. Now the city has turned into a sprawling

urban landscape that begs for more help of domestic workers.

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35DOMESTIC HELP

The first thing that strikes you about Rhianna Bibi is her size. Her very small size. Her small hands grab handfuls of metal spoons, delicately washing them. She takes quick moments in between washing to adjust the top of her dark green and red sari to make sure it covers her head. Her tiny bare feet hide under the molding on the kitchen floor, getting her closer to the sink to wash mugs, trays and plates. Her short arms reach as far as they can to wash the granite floors inside air-conditioned apartments high above the blazing Gurgaon desert floor.

Despite her small size, Rhianna is a 26-year-old wife, with two kids at

home in West Bengal. She had her first child when she was 14 years old, the same year she got married to her husband, a bicycle rickshaw driver. She’s the breadwinner of the family, and because of that, she hasn’t seen her children in two years. Because she works as a domestic servant in four homes, it is difficult to get time off. She used to work in six homes, but she fell ill and had to leave two jobs, causing her income to suffer. She doesn’t have a dream job, and she doesn’t aspire to be anything more than a domestic worker. What she wants is for her kids to do better than she has. “They will do a good job, a better job” with the help of God, Rhianna said. With a smile on her face Rhianna said she really believes she is making a difference for them, one paycheck at a time.

It’s 4 p.m. when Rhianna opens the door to the Mohan family’s 15th-floor loft to be greeted by Elvis, the Mohan’s giant white Labrador retriever. Elvis jumps on

Rhianna, and she embraces the panting pooch, saturated with sa-liva before shooing him back down to the floor with a smile on her face. Rhianna slips off her sandals, places her red leather purse onto the dresser by the door, grabs her broom and begins to sweep. There are still three more houses to clean today for Rhianna. She hurries along, taking no breaks between sweeping and washing dishes, leaving no time wasted. Time is money.

On hand and knee, Rhianna cleans floors to make about $98 a month, far more than her hus-band makes. His wages depend on how much business he gets each day. Rhianna has been working

this job for four years. This job traps people in Gurgaon, though, and while Rhianna hasn’t been home in more than two years, she doesn’t expect to stay in Gurgaon longer than two more years. But the domestic workers’ forum in New Delhi said there is a cycle that keeps these women coming back after going home. Even when they make enough money to get home and provide for their kids, that money runs out. When the money runs out, they come back to Gurgaon. The second time around might be much longer.Rhianna is a part-time domestic worker. She has her own home with her husband where she eats and sleeps. Other domestic help become full-time workers. Full-time workers live in the home of their employers, usually in a very small room designed for them. Full-time workers are more likely to experience abuse from their employers because they hardly ever get to leave the home, giving them no chances to report their abuse.

“(MY CHILDREN) WILL DO A GOOD JOB, A BETTER JOB (WITH THE HELP OF GOD).”

FOR A BETTER FUTUREPHOTOS & STORY BY MATT MASIN

Rhianna works in several homes in Gurgaon each day, doing different chores including washing dishes, cleaning floors and cooking. While there has been a recent spike in domestic workers claiming they have been abused and tortured by their employers, Rhianna says the Mohan family has treated her with nothing but respect.

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Sahara walks down St. Thomas Marg, one of the busiest streets in Gurgaon, on her way to work. The main street is lined with high-rise

apartment buildings, much like the one Sahara goes to to clean seven days a week.

THROUGH THICK & THIN

PHOTOS & STORY BY BETHANY SCHMIDT

As the blue, sheet-metal front door opens, Sahara Begum shields her eyes from the stream of light that floods the otherwise black room. Her eyes are still filled with tears, but the cries and chanting for her deceased father have stopped.

A man from the small village in Gurgaon steps into the 10-by-10 foot brick room. His orange-dyed hair looks as if it’s on fire as the light from the early morning sun gleams through it.

The man sits on a green woven stool next to Sahara’s bed. Sahara sits, holding her small, plastic cellphone, on the wooden bed that makes up half of her single-room home.

No one else had come to visit, even though her cries could clearly be heard at the end of the row of whitewashed homes.

The phone rings with a tune that does not fit the solemn mood of the room.

Sahara’s son had already called that morning. He was the one to break the news of the death of her father. He was calling again to check up on her. Sahara’s husband wanted to stay

to comfort her, but he had no choice but to leave.

His job as a golf course custodian was lucrative. Missing a day of work would not be acceptable.

Sahara has few friends in the village. She and her husband moved here only a month ago after the rent in their previous area went up. Most of the village women have already left for work.

The majority of the females in the village have the same job. They work as domestic helpers in high-rise apartment buildings around the city.

After Sahara hangs up with her son, she calls the woman whose apartment she cleans—a woman she calls “Madame.” Luckily, Sahara’s employer is merciful and understands that she will not be able to come in to work that day.

Sahara already dotted a pink and gold bindi between her eyebrows and is wearing her lime green sari. It’s the newest of her four traditional wrap dresses, so it’s her favorite. She and her husband rarely spend money outside of what is necessary.

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37DOMESTIC HELP

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ABOVE: Sahara returns home after two hours of cleaning. Because she cleans for so few hours, she and her husband make only 9000 rupees per month (about $165). Many of her neighbors are still out, and she often spends her spare time watching television or talking with her children on the phone. RIGHT: Sahara combs her hair before leaving for work. She usually gets up at 6 a.m. when her husband leaves for his 12-hour shift as a golf course custodian in east Gurgaon.

The couple’s budget is already stretched. Money for rent and food are the first taken from their income. They send a por-tion back home to their family in Calcutta and use a part of their income for their pay-per-minute phone. The couple can only af-ford one and use it primarily to call their children daily.

Sahara and her husband moved to Delhi in 2000, and then onto Gurgaon five years later in search of better-paying jobs. They usu-ally save enough for a visit back home once a year. This year, that trip will not happen.

In the winter, Sahara fell ill with chest pains. She was taken to the hospital and prescribed medica-tion that she takes daily. The hospital stay and medication put the couple into debt, and the last allotment of their paycheck goes toward paying it off.

Sahara adjusts her position, and the bed creaks. Beneath the layers

of burlap, bubble wrap and card-board, a single sheet of plywood holds the main support of the structure. Sahara spends most of the day lying in bed to relax and prevent her pains from flaring.

She uncrosses her legs and steps down from the bed. She reaches for her wallet behind the front door and pulls out a 100-rupee bill.

She asks the orange-haired man to walk to the market cart at the end of the row of 10 matching rooms to buy some things for her cooking.

Although she is grieving today, she must still prepare a meal for her husband who works 10-hour shifts every day of the week.

Sahara works between two and three hours every day when she is able to make it. Because of her illness, Sahara must refrain from taking on extra cleaning jobs.

India: 90 million domestic workers —7.5 percent of population

United States: 1.8 million domestic workers—Less than 1 percent of the

population

In India, there are 50 times as many domestic workers as in the United States.

SOURCE: EXCLUDEDWORKERSCONGRESS.ORG

Domestic workers

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KAM SCHOOLKAM SCHOOL 41

OUTSIDETHE SYSTEMPHOTOS & STORY BY MORGAN SPIEHS

A nisha wanders through the school gate, Nashima in tow. Both wear the same clothes they wore yesterday. Anisha sits down and crosses her legs on the blue tarp inside of the class-room, separating children from dirt. Nashima sits on her lap.

The teacher brings their workbooks. Anisha, 6, starts in on her lessons, but Nashima, 3, stares at the words. She is unable to understand the characters. Within minutes her face begins to inch toward the ground.

Siddanth Buddha Ratan tries to complete his worksheet in the KAM School in Nangloi, New Delhi India.

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She falls asleep while the other kids continue their schoolwork.

Ashimia and Nashima attend Kabir Ambed Kar Mahatna School (KAM) located in Nangloi, a New Delhi slum. KAM was founded in 2005 by Truthseekers International, a Chris-tian non-government organization based in California, to help educate the children of the Banjara tribe.

According to school founder, Ka-malakar Deshpande, most adults in this nomadic tribe are illiterate. The school is located near a train station, a hot spot for crime. The community members, even the kids, are thought of as pickpockets, beggars and thieves.

A road of broken bricks and gutters of stagnant green water divide Nangloi. On the west side of the road Muslim Banjaras live in makeshift tents, while Hindi families occupy solid buildings on the east side.

For a while, ethnic segregation prevented Muslim and Hindi children from attending school to-gether. All the children in the area are welcome to attend the KAM school now. But still, the kids rarely cross the path that separates the tents from buildings, except to go to school. KAM school teachers

try to introduce children to what has been taught in government schools. The KAM School is in-tended to transition the kids into these schools.

“Maybe one of these kids will make it through the system,” said Grant McFarland, a missionary from Texas who works at the school three times a week. “Maybe just one though.”

In the three years the school has been running, Deshpande said about 50 kids have moved on to other schools.

Deshpande said 130 students are enrolled at the KAM school, but during a three-week period in May, only 15 to 30 showed up each day.

School runs weekdays from 10 a.m. to 1 p.m. The kids go over Hindi and English alphabets, numbers and songs. Children ages 2 to 13 fill in the same worksheets and workbooks. Some days the

children are instructed on how to brush their teeth. Those who have been deemed too dirty by the teachers bathe in clean water unavailable to them at home.

There are no desks, no exams, no grades.

The children often don’t pay atten-tion or sometimes fall asleep.

“There’s not a whole lot of educa-tion that goes on,” McFarland said. “The teachers, maybe they show up, maybe they don’t.” After 10 a.m., a lock is fastened onto the school’s brass gates. Children who have come too late often stand with their faces pressed against the gates. Some children sort trash in a pit just a sidewalk away from the school to earn rupees for their families.

“They don’t seem to realize the depravity of their situation,” Mc-Farland said.

Grant McFarland, a teacher at the school, teaches English words to the KAM school kids.

The Banjara are nomadic tribes scattered across India. Those in Nangloi are primarily cattle traders and their camps, known as tandas, reflect the Banjara’s migratory lifestyle.

Population: 5.6 millionLanguage: Lambadi, Hindi, Kannada, Telugu, MarathiReligion: Hindu, Muslim, Sikh

SOURCE: KAMPUBLICSCHOOL.ORG

THE BANJARA

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KAM SCHOOL 43

Nashima Kaium falls asleep during lessons at the KAM School. The children often nod off or don’t participate during class.

KAM SCHOOL

SOURCE: CIA WORLD FACTBOOK

SCHOOL LIFE EXPECTANCY (PRIMARY TO TERTIARY EDUCATION)

FEMALE 10 YEARS

FEMALE 17 YEARS

11 YEARSMALE

15 YEARSMALE

10 YEARSAVERAGE

16 YEARSAVERAGE

INDIA U.S.

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Muskan Salim, 7, sings along with the other children . The kids sing Hindi and English songs every day as a part of their limited curriculum.

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KAM SCHOOL 45KAM SCHOOL

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A group of children stands outside the KAM School gates. After 10 a.m., the gates are locked and those who are late cannot attend school that day. Some of these children will try to participate from outside the gate.

When the weather is mild enough, the school holds lessons outdoors. The children outside the gate yell answers and sing the songs along with those in school.

The teachers still hit the children as punishment even though it is banned by the New Dehli govern-ment. The teachers strike them by hand, with slender sticks or with a plastic cricket bat. If the teachers have to leave the room, they may hand the sticks to older students and allow them to govern the rest of the children.

“I used to hit them with the (cricket) bat, but they would just kind of laugh,” McFarland said, “until I hit too hard, then they’d start crying, but it would just effect that one kid. The rest of them wouldn’t care.”

According to KAM teacher Shabana Zaidy, the kids usually attend the school until they are old enough to become a source of income for the family.

“If your parents say, ‘No, you’re going to work today,’ well, she’s going to work today.” McFarland said. “She’s not going to tell them no.”

Despite their lack of resources, the kids dream about the future. Ashu wants to be a teacher. Tulsi, a doctor. And Sandeep, a policeman.

But even when it comes to his

top students, McFarland “probably wouldn’t put down very much” on their futures.

Few of the school employees are formally trained in education. Anuradha Dravid, who runs Selec-tion Search, a company that recruits teachers for Indian schools, said KAM does not meet the qualifica-tions of the Central Board of Educa-tion. “The Central Board does not affiliate a school if the teachers do not have the required qualification in education,” Dravid said.

But the poverty and tradition gov-erning Nangloi make KAM school the only education some children

will ever receive. After classes have ended for the day, Anisha and Nashima’s brother, Nazium, follows his father down one of the pathways of the slum, tugging a steer behind him. The steer balks at a muddy ditch. Digging his heels into the dirt, Nazium uses the handmade rope halter fastened around its nose to force it into submission. Then Nazium turns around and hustles to catch up with his father. He is only 4 years old.

Raising cattle is how Anisha, Nashi-ma and Nazium’s family has been making a meager profit for genera-tions. Nazium’s path is already laid out for him, and school isn’t a part of it. And at the age of 4, Nazium might be already working a job he will continue for years, limited to the slum life he was born into.

“MAYBE ONE OF THESE KIDS WILL MAKE IT THROUGH THE SYSTEM. MAYBE JUST ONE THOUGH.”

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KAM SCHOOL 47

BELOW: Saloni Rais gets help from Grant McFarland, a missionary and teacher at the KAM school. Most of the school’s teachers have not had any formal training in education.

LEFT: The Nangloi slum is split into two: Banjara Muslims occupy the tents and Hindu people live in solid structures on the other side.

KAM SCHOOL

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LEPROSY 49

Asha Mandal cleans the mirror in her family’s home in one of the leprosy colonies in Allahabad, India.

ach step is slow. Each step is care-ful. Each step is made more diffi-cult with time. Her feet are curled under themselves and her fingers

have become stubs. Asha Devi has lived with leprosy for most of her life, and the deformities that have evolved cause her to rely on crutches to move. She hobbles down the dirt walkways of the colony. The only work she is able to do anymore is some household chores. She contin-ues to cook on the ground outside her family’s home, but she can no longer sweep or fetch water from the well.

She and thousands of others who are leprosy affected in India are forced to live in isolated leprosy colonies for their whole lives because of the stigma and discrimination from general society. “When I came to know about [leprosy], it was already too late,” she said. “My hands and legs were already rotten.”

BEYONDTHE STIGMA

PHOTOS & STORYBY ANNA REED

E

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The disease starts with small oily or white patches on the skin. They are not usually itchy or painful; so many poor families do not seek medical attention. But eventually, irreversible nerve damage sets in. It starts with a numbing of the fingers and toes and slowly moves in on the body. Severe deformities can take years to develop, but be-cause there is a loss of feeling, people are unaware when there is pain. The untreated pain can lead to more severe deformities or infections.

Caused by micro bacteria, leprosy only affects those with weak im-mune systems and those who are under nourished. India currently has the highest population of leprosy-affected people, with about 70 percent of the world’s leprosy population living in the country.

Leprosy is not hereditary. Treatment is free and within 24 hours of initial treatment, the disease is no longer contagious. But this is not widely known in India, especially in poor and rural areas.

Stigma is prevalent for many living with leprosy. Those not affected are often scared of the disease, scared they will catch it. They fear the deformities that come after years without treatment.

Asha and her family live in the Kusht Rogi Sewa Ashram colony in Allahabad, India, one of the more than 700 leprosy colonies through-out the country. Most people with leprosy rely on begging for money and rice to provide the very basics for their families. But Asha never wants to beg. Even though her hob-bled walk and physical disabilities may make her seem a bit vulner-able, she refuses sympathy. She, her husband and their three children, say they never want leprosy to bring them down in society.

Her husband, Nagendar, also has leprosy, but his disease has not caused the serious deformities that Asha suffers from. He still works in farming, along with others in their colony. His toes and fingers are starting to become stubbed, but he is still able to work and share the profits of agriculture with the entire colony.

Nagendar says he has more self-respect than to go out to beg. He says it would only be a desperate, last resort if he or others in his family started begging.

But many others who are leprosy affected in India, do not share the same mindset. For many, they grew up in a society that has always shunned the disabled or handicapped. They have always known those who have leprosy are unable to do normal work, but can only beg.

A sense of self-stigma exists with many Indians living with leprosy. It is an embarrassment for them and for many the disease brings a sense of shame for tarnishing the family’s reputation. They choose to live in colonies in order to help their family not have to deal with having a leper in their home.

Bacchalal Yadav begs almost every-day. He has lost most of his right leg due to leprosy and his remain-ing toes and fingers are stubbed. The blue cart he sits in every morn-ing, he made himself. He was a carpenter before he got leprosy. His wife, Subhadra, helps him get back and forth from the Nav nirman Kusht Ashram colony everyday.

She waits patently for him to muster the energy to lift himself and his prosthetic leg out of the blue wooden cart. Everyday, when the sun gets strongest, she pushes him through the crowded tourist hotspot near where the Ganges and Yamana Rivers meet. The mud

Bacchalal’s wife, Subhadra, helps him attach his prosthetic leg after a day of begging.

LEPROSY

Next Page: Bacchalal spends everyday begging for money and rice hoping to catch a religious and empathetic crowd, yet most people avoid walking near him and his cart.

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and trash puddles make the trek difficult. The incline of the hill, before reaching their home, is the hardest part. Her back bends and her thin legs move slowly while walking up the hill, watched by the simultaneously heartbroken, yet nervous stares of tourists.

Once home, after about a half-mile push, she helps Yadav to get up on his crutches. He goes into a field, just feet from their home, to relieve himself. The field is filled with cows, pigs, dogs, chickens,

trash and feces.After a short rest on his straw cot outside their mud and bamboo home, he unwraps the end of his leg, revealing the dry skin underneath. Subhadra helps him move the 30 feet to the public water spigot for a bath.

Her hands, covered in boils and warts, massage the bath water into his scalp. She helps him clean the stump where his leg ends just below the knee.

Subhadra does not suffer from

leprosy, but faces similar stigma and isolation. The warts and boils that cover her entire body and face scare off most of the population. She and Bacchalal have one daugh-ter together and five grandchil-dren, who are healthy.

Although they both admit they do not want to beg, that they would rather work a normal job, Bac-chalal and Subhadra see no other option for themselves. The self- stigma and self-discrimination they live with keeps them from being

able to search for other work. They are embarrassed by their disabilities and do not want their families to suffer discrimination because of what they must personally live with. They feel that no matter their efforts, society will still reject them and finding work or a home out-side the colony will be impossible.

So they, and thousands of others, continue to beg. And the cycle of stigma and discrimination from all sides continues.

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Asha holds her family’s share of the produce sold for the week, just over 50 rupees.

Asha and her family of five live in a one-room home and sleep on cots outside.

Above: Nagendar and others in his leprosy colony farm their own produce and sell some in town. The colony is one of the only colonies in India that does not rely solely on begging to survive.

Right: Bacchalal Yadav washes the stump where his leg ends at a public faucet in his leprosy colony in Allahabad, India. He lost his leg due to an infection after being diagnosed with leprosy as an adult.

Next Page: Subhadra Yadav does not suffer from leprosy like her husband, but suffers much of the same societal stigma because of the boils and warts that cover her face and body.

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AWAITING BETTER DAYS

PHOTOS BY ANNA REED STORY BY FRANNIE SPROULS

Murti adjusts her scarf while walking to her home. Women in her village in Haryana, India must cover their faces in front of men.May 22, 2012.

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W hen she has passed the men, she lifts her scarf up. Her face is calm as she stares

ahead, her skin glowing in the afternoon sun. The skin creases around her eyes and her mouth. She looks like she’s in her sixties, but she is 40 years old. She lowers the scarf back over her face and continues into the village.

This is a story about staying strong, even when life throws you every worst-case scenario. It’s about stay-ing strong not for yourself, but for your child and for your sister. It’s about not having anyone to turn to – not your parents, not your family, not your husband. This is a story about protection and doing all you can to protect the ones you love. It’s about wanting to turn back, to give up, but making the decision to be there. This is a story of heartbreak, suffering, and pain. It’s about all of those, but most importantly it’s about staying strong in the hope that one day everything will be better.

Murti has not told her story many times. In the small room, her lilac scarf stood out against the blue-painted walls. She sits cross-legged with her back against the wall, her hands on her knees. Her face is calm and she begins to tell her tale.

Her parents arranged her marriage when she 16. Her husband was 23 at the time. She’d never met him. Her husband had two younger brothers and Murti’s younger sister Roshni married the second

brother. Murti had a normal life and lived comfortably alongside him.

Eight to nine months later, while she was visiting her parents, her husband swallowed a lethal gulp of pesticide.

“He was having trouble with his own family, with his mother,” Murti said. “He was a loose-tem-pered man.”

Murti did not know much about her husband’s arguments with his family, but knew his parents were problematic – she only had about one month of association with her husband’s family before he died. It is Indian tradition that when the girl is married at a young age, she will stay with her husband for a few days or a week and return home to her parent’s home.

She was shocked at the news. She thought her life was over. While she was living with her husband’s family, her father-in-law tried to molest her on several occasions. The torture began when she resisted. Murti became a prisoner in her own home – she wasn’t al-lowed to talk to the neighbors, she couldn’t move anywhere out of the family. Each day, she had domestic chores to complete.

“He was always finding faults in my work,” she said. “He would find an excuse to beat me.”

Murti did not have a good rela-tionship with her mother-in-law either. Her mother-in-law knew of

the advances Murti’s father-in-law was making. Murti gathered that her mother-in-law was having an extramarital affair and wanted to cover her own sins. So Murti’s mother-in-law asserted author-

ity over Murti, assuring that she remained in the house and not talk to anyone.

“Every day was hell for me,” she said. “There is not one incident

It is mid-afternoon and the temperature soars above 110 degrees. The wind kicks up dust along the road. A purple scarf covering her face, she treads along the side of the road back into the small village. Her head never turns as pedestrians walk past. A pair of men stands on the op-posite side of the road. They lean against the stationary bicycle and watch her walk by.

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Murti carries a bowl of cow dung on her head. She collects the dung with her hands to put in the bowl. The dung is dried and used for fuel.

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(that stands out). Everyday, some-thing or other was happening.”

She would work in the fields each day and return home only to be beaten by sticks. It became a nor-mal routine for her. Every day was as hellish as the one before.

This torture went on for six months. Then, according to Indian customs, Murti married the third brother; her sister was still married to the second brother. When the peaks season for farm-ing ended, Murti would be sent back to her parents’ place.

When she was living with her second husband, he would not protest his father’s advances on Murti. It was a miserable as when her first husband had died; torture became a routine again. Her second husband physically and mentally abused Murti, much like her father-in-law.

“They just did not kill me,” Murti said. “Whatever else they could have done, they had done to me.”

She thought about committing suicide many times. She thought about running away, but it is not socially acceptable for a woman to run away from her husband. Her parents did not interject because they felt that Murti’s place was with her husband’s family. Murti did not fight back because she was afraid of her husband.

After seven years and no children, her second husband wanted a different wife and Murti married the second brother – her sister Roshni’s husband. Both sisters suffered similar abuse.

It was during her third marriage when Murti had her son, Manjeet. Her in-laws did not believe Man-jeet was her third husband’s son. They tried to kill him when he was only a few months old.

Her in-laws made a powder out of an electric bulb and mixed it into the milk while Murti was working in the fields. When she returned, Manjeet was crying. He’d begun passing stools more than usual. She didn’t think much of it – be-cause of the season she assumed it was a fever many children got.

After a few days, with his condi-tion persisting, Roshni insisted Manjeet be taken to a doctor immediately. At the doctor’s, the sisters found out Manjeet had been fed something poisonous – the electric bulb.

Manjeet went to live with Murti’s parents and doesn’t remember liv-ing with his mother when he was younger.

“I was brought up by my grand-father,” Manjeet said. “He was a very nice man. I spend most of my childhood with my maternal grandfather … They used to treat

me well. They used to treat me like their own child. They used to make sure I didn’t face any problems.”

The abuse became constant for Murti and her sister; Roshni remembers an incident where her head was badly injured. Their husband became a drunkard, spending any money he earned on liquor.

After the constant abuse, the community stepped in. Murti and Roshni moved away from their in-laws into a small, one-room house. They were given one cow. But the sisters still had to work in the fields, brutal labor.

“Almost every farming work had to be done by my mother,” Manjeet said. “When I grew up, I started realizing and taking over the work she used to do. I started working in the fields when I was 8 or 9 years old.”

Murti and her sister own five cows for milking. They sell the milk to neighbors and in the market nearby.

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Since moving, the sisters have been able to expand to three rooms, a barn area and five cows. In October 2011, the sisters gained the right to their land after their husband sold it. He’d wanted more money to buy liquor. It was the community who stepped in to acquire the land for Murti and Roshni.

The sisters have lived together for more than 10 years. They never quarrel and they share happiness and sorrows with each other. Work is shared between the two – one working in the fields while one works in the house. It’s not about who can be the better person because they are facing the same problem, Roshni said.

Her parents arranged her marriage when she 16. Her husband was 23 at the time. She’d never met him. Her husband had two younger brothers and Murti’s younger sister Roshni married the second brother. Murti had a normal life and lived comfortably alongside him.

Eight to nine months later, while she was visiting her parents, her husband swallowed a lethal gulp of pesticide.

“He was having trouble with his own family, with his mother,” Murti said. “He was a loose-tem-pered man.”

Murti did not know much about her husband’s arguments with his family, but knew his parents were problematic – she only had about one month of association with her husband’s family before he died. It is Indian tradition that when the girl is married at a young age, she will stay with her husband for a few days or a week and return home to her parent’s home.

She was shocked at the news. She thought her life was over. While she was living with her husband’s family, her father-in-law tried to molest her on several occasions. The torture began when she resist-ed. Murti became a prisoner in her own home – she wasn’t allowed to talk to the neighbors, she couldn’t move anywhere out of the family. Each day, she had domestic

chores to complete.

“He was always finding faults in my work,” she said. “He would find an excuse to beat me.”

Murti did not have a good rela-tionship with her mother-in-law either. Her mother-in-law knew of the advances Murti’s father-in-law was making. Murti gathered that her mother-in-law was having an extramarital affair and wanted to cover her own sins. So Murti’s mother-in-law asserted authority over Murti, assuring that she re-mained in the house and not talk to anyone.

“Every day was hell for me,” she said. “There is not one incident (that stands out). Everyday, some-thing or other was happening.”

She would work in the fields each day and return home only to be beaten by sticks. It became a nor-mal routine for her. Every day was as hellish as the one before.

This torture went on for six months. Then, according to Indian customs, Murti married the third brother; her sister was still married to the second brother. When the peaks season for farm-ing ended, Murti would be sent back to her parents’ place.

When she was living with her second husband, he would not protest his father’s advances on Murti. It was a miserable as when her first husband had died; torture became a routine again. Her second husband physically and mentally abused Murti, much like her father-in-law.

“They just did not kill me,” Murti said. “Whatever else they could have done, they had done to me.”

She thought about committing suicide many times. She thought about running away, but it is not socially acceptable for a woman to run away from her husband. Her parents did not interject because they felt that Murti’s place was with her husband’s family. Murti did not fight back because she was afraid of her husband.

After seven years and no children, her second husband wanted a different wife and Murti married

the second brother – her sister Roshni’s husband. Both sisters suffered similar abuse.

It was during her third marriage when Murti had her son, Manjeet. Her in-laws did not believe Man-jeet was her third husband’s son. They tried to kill him when he was only a few months old.

Her in-laws made a powder out of an electric bulb and mixed it into the milk while Murti was working in the fields. When she returned, Manjeet was crying. He’d begun passing stools more than usual. She didn’t think much of it – be-cause of the season she assumed it was a fever many children got.

After a few days, with his condi-tion persisting, Roshni insisted Manjeet be taken to a doctor immediately. At the doctor’s, the sisters found out Manjeet had been fed something poisonous – the electric bulb.

Manjeet went to live with Murti’s parents and doesn’t remember liv-ing with his mother when he was younger.

“I was brought up by my grand-father,” Manjeet said. “He was a very nice man. I spend most of my childhood with my maternal grandfather … They used to treat me well. They used to treat me like their own child. They used to make sure I didn’t face any problems.”

The abuse became constant for

Murti and her sister; Roshni remembers an incident where her head was badly injured. Their husband became a drunkard, spending any money he earned on liquor.

After the constant abuse, the community stepped in. Murti and Roshni moved away from their in-laws into a small, one-room house. They were given one cow. But the sisters still had to work in the fields, brutal labor.

“Almost every farming work had to be done by my mother,” Manjeet said. “When I grew up, I started realizing and taking over the work she used to do. I started working in the fields when I was 8 or 9 years old.”

Since moving, the sisters have been able to expand to three rooms, a barn area and five cows. In October 2011, the sisters gained the right to their land after their husband sold it. He’d wanted more money to buy liquor. It was the community who stepped in to acquire the land for Murti and Roshni.

The sisters have lived together for more than 10 years. They never quarrel and they share happiness and sorrows with each other. Work is shared between the two – one working in the fields while one works in the house. It’s not about who can be the better person because they are facing the same problem, Roshni said.

Murti talks to her nephew, Amarjeet, after he returns home from classes in May 2012. Frannie Sprouls

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CRUMBLING COMMUNITY

Residents of the “magical” community that has been around for nearly eight decades in the Kathputli Colony of Delhi fear a new development will erode their way of life.

PHOTOS & STORY BY JON AUGUSTINE

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A man showers on the upper level of his home at Shadipur. Basic commodities such as running water and reliable electricity are uncommon for Shadipur residents. The planned development includes three floors of a new high rise building to be designated for current Kathputli families. The lack of access to water, electricity and secure housing will be lost, but residents fear that their community’s culture and togetherness will be lost as well.

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A pair of tattered suit-cases lie open on the concrete floor of the Khan family home.

One is overflowing with decks of cards, umbrellas, marbles of vary-ing sizes, a small collapsible table and other traditional tools of the Indian magician trade. Altimas, the 17-year-old son of world-renowned illusionist Ishamud-din Khan, packs the other with brushes, small jars of face paint, a metallic blue spandex suit and a red afro wig.

“We don’t like the clowning,” Altimas explains. “So many people were asking about it, though, when they’d call us about the magic. So now we bring this clown costume.”

The teenager and his father are packing up for a magic show at the birthday party of an upper-middle class family’s daughter. Ishamud-din’s appearances at parties and schools generate the bulk of the income for the Khans, a family of eight who live in the slum next to the Delhi Metro’s Blue Line at Shadipur Depot in West Delhi.

This is what it has come to for Ishamuddin. The man who has made a life out of performing magic that can only be described as, “very Indian,” barely turns out a half dozen tricks to his audiences of well-to-do parents and their privileged toddlers before atten-tion fades. Any of the romance that one would expect to naturally accompany the magic and its well-traveled, veteran magician, never seems to make it through the front door.

It’s not for lack of showmanship or professionalism. Ishamuddin’s routine is down pat. His illusions are perfected, his appearance is sharp, his smile is bright and used strategically in conjunction with a grab bag of facial expres-sions that accentuate the show. His presence alone interrupts the natural environment of any room. The problem is that no room is a natural environment for Indian magic. It needs the streets – the place where traditional Indian performance and art was born. But the dusty, crowded roads of Delhi are no longer available to it.

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“We cannot perform on the streets anymore,” Altimas concedes. “No-body in Shadipur can. The police will not allow it. They either make you leave or demand a bribe.”

Physically and socially, Shadipur strays from the standard slum. It is home to the Kathputli colony – an array of Indian performers that includes magicians, musicians, acrobats, animal trainers and puppeteers. Originally used in the middle part of the 20th century as a camp for traveling artists and en-tertainers, the area was settled and permanent residences were built in the 1970s. Today, the slum made up of a narrow maze of corridors and colorfully painted stone dwell-ings is home to approximately 2,800 families. Many continue to practice the ancient, enchanting

arts that the western world has come to associate with India.

These traditionalists are currently faced with a strange irony, though. These Shadipur-based talents have a rapidly shrinking influence on the culture of a westernizing India. The traveling storytellers and entertainers that once served as principal ambassadors of the unique beauty of southern Asia now take a backseat to Bollywood films and western-influenced pop music.

For residents of Shadipur, the sting of their ancient art losing its hometown relevance is difficult enough to handle without the repercussions that materialize in the wake of that loss. Today, that fallout threatens to include the worst imaginable scenario of any for the Kathputli colony: the loss of their community.

In 2009 the Delhi Development Authority (DDA) initiated an “in situ slum redevelopment project” with Raheja Developers – a Delhi-based realty company known for its high end residential and commer-cial projects. The venture has been dubbed the “Phoenix project” and, according to the Raheja Develop-ers website, calls for “the construc-tion of 2,800 EWS (Economically weaker section) units for the squat-ter families of Kathputli colony” in conjunction with high rise flats and commercial development.

On paper, the colony is getting an unheard-of deal. In exchange for surrendering their current homes and living in extremely crowded conditions for two to five years, documented residents will be given modern flats to permanently settle down in free of charge. However, walking through the slum at a time when these changes are imminent,

one does not sense an overwhelm-ing feeling of excitement. Many residents, in fact, are disgruntled and hurt by the minute amount of input they were afforded in the planning stages of the redevelop-ment.

A more modern arrangement may mean the continued loss of an art form the families who live here have learned over generations. Sturdy white walls will separate the community that lives together and shares its talents with neighbors.

Residents wait to see what this move will mean for their art form and way of life. The dusty streets that gave life to the magic of their performances will be gone and replaced with more westernized buildings that may not allow for for the creativity that the commu-nity’s twisting, colorful streets do now.

Altamas Khan, son of world renowned magician Ishamuddin Khan, practices a new magic trick in which umbrellas appear to materialize from thin air and burst from his hands. He is the second oldest of six children in Ishamuddin’s family. All of them have a strong handle on magic performance, but Altamas and his older sister, Jasmine, have come to realize there may not be a future in it. As India has westernized and modernized, public interest in traditional Indian art has drastically waned. “Today, people get their entertainment from Bollywood,” Altamas admitted. “They don’t need us anymore.”

AWAITING TRANSITION

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KATHPUTLI COLONY 69

A familiar sight upon stepping off the New Delhi metro at Shadipur Depot emerges from the shadows of a narrow corridor between two homes. The area is home to the Kathputli colony, a slum-dwelling group of puppeteers, magicians, acrobats and musicians descended from India’s famous traveling Rajisthani artists. Props, tools, instruments for performances, and in this case, a mask, wander through the slum with their owners, as though they were extensions of the performer’s bodies.

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FOR THE MOVE PREPARING

Amaan Khan helps his grandfather, Babban Khan, paste photographs of Kathputli colony families to DDA contracts in the Khan clan’s Shadipur home. After the slum redevelopment plans were announced, suspicions arose that upon completion, authorities would never act on their promise to provide new homes for current Shadipur residents. To ease worries, each family was photographed in front of their current dwelling so that visual proof of their existence could be included with these contracts. The contracts serve a dual purpose. For Shadipur residents, they secure legal documentation of the DDA’s promise to them. For the DDA, they will prevent freeloaders from claiming that they are owed flats in the new development. While the permanent units are being constructed, the Kathputli colony will be moved to transit housing in nearby Baljeet Nagar. Each transitional living space is a single, 12x8 foot room--a drastic reduction in square footage for most Kathputli families.

Construction of temporary dwellings

is expected to be completed by the end of 2013. The permanent

residences promised by the

Delhi Development Authority will not be

finished for at least two years.

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KATHPUTLI COLONY 73

A woman of the Kathputli colony dances during a late-evening wedding ceremony in the Shadipur slum. Crowded, squalid living conditions fail to break the vibrant spirit of Shadipur residents. Sporadic song and dance is not uncommon in the 10-acre slum. Home to a tight-knit community of nearly 3,000 families of performers, excuses to party are abundant. However, reasons to be nervous also have their place here. In 2008, the Delhi Development Authority (DDA) announced a slum redevelopment plan for the Shadipur area. Since then, the project has been repeatedly delayed, but when the ground breaks the Kathputli colony’s brick homes will be demolished.

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TABLE OF CONTENTS 75

12 YAMUNA RIVER 8 KAM SCHOOL 10 LEPROSY 10 PERFORMERS 10 ELEPHANTS 14 ADDICTION 10 RAIL WORKERS 8 DOMESTIC VIOLENCE 10 DOMESTIC HELP 6 BREAKING BARRIERS

INDIA’S FORSAKENStories of poverty in a vibrant nation

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RAILWORKERS 77

Migrant railway workers support selves, families with little pay, no benefits

PHOTOS & STORY BY SARAH MILLER & KAYLEE EVERLY

LIFE ON THE TRACKS

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W ith clenched teeth and protruding biceps, Sha-shikant helps

lift up an old steel train track. The teenager is thin. He doesn’t look particularly strong. But his stamina is prevalent in his grueling everyday work on the tracks.

As a young boy, Shashikant lost his father to an unknown illness. His mother remarried, which caused conflict in their family. So Sha-

shikant’s uncle, Surender Kumar, took him in. Though he was young, Shashikant joined his uncle as a train worker at the Hazrat Nizamuddin Railway Station in New Delhi, India.

Shashikant and Surender are two of about 30 men who all work and live together in a camp sandwiched between six train tracks. These men moved from neighboring cities to work at the station – most

coming from Hardoi, a town about six hours away from Delhi. For the workers, leaving home meant the opportunity to earn money for themselves and their families. But it also meant leaving their families behind.

“Working condition is not at all in question, because this is the only way I get the money to survive,” Shashikant said.

The availability of jobs at Hazrat

Nizamuddin came from the Indian government’s connection to the railways. While cars are the main form of transportation in the U.S., trains reign supreme in India. Each day, 19,000 trains run in India.

Trains are also the cheapest form of transportation in India. Cutting traveling costs is important due to poverty rates, which can be as high as 42 percent in smaller towns like Hardoi.

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K AY L E E E V E R LY

The Hazrat Nizamuddin Railway Station is not only a main source of transportation for many people in the country, it is also the place a group of 30 migrant train workers call home for three months at a time. They live under lean-to tents and eat and sleep a mere three feet from the tracks.

S A R A H M I L L E R

Bhedi, a government employed railway worker, watches and waits with flags as subcontracted workers haul new pieces on and off the tracks at Hazrat Nizamuddin Railway Station in New Delhi, India. Government workers wear bright orange uniform shirts, while subcontracted workers wear whatever clothes they have.

Central Dehli

South Dehli

North Dehli

West Dehli

• New Dehli

• Hazrat Nizamuddin

Old Dehli•

NEW DEHLI

RAILWAYS

Yamuna River

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The Indian government manages the railways. Politicians abuse this connection. Come election season, politicians promise to keep train ticket prices low. While this is good for the pocketbooks of many Indians, it causes problems on the tracks.

Ticket prices haven’t changed in 10 years because many Indians can’t afford even a minor price increase. But costs to keep trains running, such as fuel and replace-ment parts, have gone up, causing the safety of the trains to deterio-rate.

With a shortage of funds to hire people and maintain train opera-tions, the railways began outsourc-ing to contractors to hire workers for lower wages and fewer benefits.

Shashikant and the other train workers earn 6,000 rupees a month, which is about $120 per month in the U.S. Usually, half of train workers’ wages are sent to

their families, whom they only see every two or three months.

Government-hired workers earn more than twice as much as the rest of the rail workers.

“We can’t do anything because they are official; we are private,” Surender said. “We just do our work.”

An average day of work involves lifting out old tracks and hauling in new ones. Most of the work is carried out using a few simple tools, such as steel levers. In order to gain enough leverage to lift tracks, the workers must use all their weight by dangling from the lever or jumping on top of it and

“WORKING CONDITION IS NOT AT ALL IN QUESTION, BECAUSE THIS IS THE ONLY WAY I GET THE MONEY TO SURVIVE.”

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K AY L E E E V E R LY

Shashikant and his coworkers move a new piece of railway to change out an old piece at the Hazrat Nizamuddin Railway Station in New Delhi, India.

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pushing. Then, groups of up to 14 men carry in new tracks using metal clamps with handles.

Despite the dangers of working on the tracks, if the men suffer injuries, they do not receive com-pensation.

“Most of the hard work is done by us,” Surender said. “And most of the light work, like waving flags, is done by (the government work-ers).”

Other jobs include raking up rocks and dumping them in sacks, greasing and tightening bolts and sawing tracks.

But what’s more surprising than the amount of work these men do for little pay is how they live.

When work is done, they trek back to their camp, tools in hand.

Seven tents rest upon a chunk of land, about 200 by 50 feet. On one end of the camp, pieces of old cement slabs from the tracks sur-round a patch of grass and weeds. There’s a muddy puddle where the men bathe and wash dishes. At the other end, men sit and relax on more scattered chunks of cement.

This is where the men live, while a seemingly endless number of trains rush by that are no more than two or three feet away.

Normally, in their hometowns, these men would return home to wives or mothers who would always cook dinner for them. But at Hazrat Nizamuddin, the men prepare their own meals.

When the workers finish for the day, they quickly shower using just a bar of soap and a hose. Meanwhile, passenger trains roll

by. After getting cleaned up, some men grab axes to chop wood for cooking dinner while others head to a crowded market nearby to get food.

Smoke rises from small fires the men build to boil their rice. Oth-ers use round metal pans to make naan, a type of Indian flatbread. To add flavor to meals, the men add spices, chicken and vegetables.

The workers have little downtime. But when they do, they nap, play card games or listen to Hindi mu-sic from their cell phones.

It’s small comforts like these that help the men get by until they can finally return home.

At the end of the night, they lie down in their tents fall asleep shoulder to shoulder, with the sound of train horns and steel wheels screeching along the tracks.

“After the long day of work, we get so tired that it doesn’t matter where we are sleeping,” said Ram Kishore, a train worker. “We just go to sleep. This situation doesn’t bother us anymore.”

For a Hazrat Nizamuddin train worker, life changes very little from day to day. But these men deal with the monotony and hardships of living and working just a few feet from the tracks in order to support their families.

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Shashikant and a friend bond over a phone call at the Hazrat Nizamuddin Railway Station in New Delhi, India on May 18, 2012. During their three months of labor, the men’s primary source of communication with family is through phone calls.

2013/14 budget: $12.6 billion Additions: 500 km of railway,

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INDA RAIL PLANS

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Shashikant washes a pot in preparation for dinner after a day of working on the tracks at the Hazrat Nizamuddin Railway Station in New Delhi, India. K AY L E E E V E R LY

S A R A H M I L L E R

A train passes by the mens’ camp as they cook dinner after a day of working on the railroad tracks of Hazrat Nizamuddin Railway Station in New Delhi, India.

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Shashikant has dreams of one day going back to his home town and working as a farmer on his family land.

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DRIVING OVER

LIMITATIONS

Delhi’s first female rickshaw driver came from a restiricted

upbringing to the city to claim independence and

impowerment.

PHOTOS & STORY BY NICKOLAI HAMMAR

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Sunita Chowdry wears a white jumper to signify that she owns her own rickshaw. Chowdry is the first and only female rickshaw driver in the city of Dehli, which has a population of just over 16 million.

In the midst of screamingly vibrant colors, millions of people and hundreds of swerving auto rickshaws and

cars, something actually sticks out in the streets of Delhi, India: Sunita Chowdry.

Out of 22 million people in Delhi, she is the only female rickshaw driver. Within the entire northern half of India she is the only female rickshaw driver – and one of just four in the country.

Nearly all of the other drivers sport pastel blue uniform. Head to toe, Sunita dresses in a dirty white one-piece jumper that indicates she owns her own rickshaw. She is will-ing to take passengers anywhere in the city. But just because she is a woman does not mean she will back down on her prices. In that, she’s no different from the rest of the rickshaw drivers. And like the others, she’ll ask for far more than is reasonable, then just stare a potential passenger down when he or she suggests a lower price. She does, however, have to back down more often than other drivers do.

Sunita struggles to earn enough money to pay her rent, while at the same time donating her earnings to those less fortunate. She weaves passengers through traffic in light blue upholstered leather seats – topping out at approximately 30 miles per hour. She’s a woman who takes the same oath at the beginning of each day: to spend half of her earnings on shoes for women without footwear if she makes at least $20 in a day.

Sunita comes from a small, highly conservative village in India. Tired of sexist oppression, she ran away from home in her early teens. She ran to Delhi in hopes of finding a less oppressive society and a job.

“Everywhere I went to find a job they asked if I could speak English, but that was not my upbringing,” she said. “I could read some but could not speak.”

Soon after moving to Delhi, Sunita was without work, without a home and without a friend. She knew she needed to find a way to

Haggling with customers is part of a rickshaw driver’s job. As a woman in India’s patriarchial society, Sunita Chowdry once found it difficult to negotiate prices with male customers. While she has grown more comfortable with the practice, she claims to back down more often than her male counterparts.

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sustain herself. She abandoned the idea finding work in an office or business and went to hard labor.

She toiled in factories for years. She spent her nights in parks, too cold to sleep during the winter. She walked the aisle of buses for many months as a conductor. Eventually, she became the first woman to receive a commercial li-cense to rent and drive a rickshaw. She is the first woman to have purchased her own and is saving up to buy a second.

When Sunita looks back on how she used to live, a certain memory comes to mind. An employee of a crematorium found her without a home or a friend. A man she cleaned for before working in factories had recently died, and she inherited an old quilt from him. This man had been nearly a complete stranger to her. Sunita

briefly held a job cleaning the man’s living space, and he left this blanket to her. All those months of sleepless nights, the hours awake in the cold, became a little more bearable. Even today, she cries recalling that point in her life.

“I had nothing and he left me his quilt.”

Even after becoming a rickshaw driver, Sunita has had obstacles. Other drivers used to let the air out of the tires and tear the cover-ing off of her rickshaw. They would shoo potential customers away from Sunita. “I had to make a living de-spite all my troubles,” said Sunita.

So over time Sunita gained alli-ances with other drivers and police officers to help stop the vandalism to her rickshaw.

There’s more to Sunita, though, than owning her own green and

yellow rickshaw. She is undoubt-edly proud to be an independent woman in an almost unimaginably patriarchal society by Western standards. She embraces the fact that she is discriminated against because of her gender, so she can show other women how she over-comes these challenges. She laughs at the times she’s been harassed by policemen, and speaks of more

heinous acts against her with a serious tone, but with the same brightness in her eyes.

Once, a group of other rickshaw drivers prevented her from return-ing to her home. Sunita said they felt threatened by her and how she might encourage other women to start driving rickshaws. As a result she was forced to sleep in her rick-shaw on the street for a number of nights.

“Even if a woman has nothing, no home, no money, nothing, if she has courage, then that is her biggest strength and wealth,” said Sunita.

Though she has already set a new standard for women all over India while helping others in the process, she continues to strive for more for herself and others across the country.

Sunita Chowdry enjoys her job as a rickshaw driver, a position she has held for rougly six years. As one of the only female rickshaw drivers in the country, she faces some challenges from customers and other drivers, but does so with a smile.

“I ONLY HAD ONE SET OF CLOTHES THAT I USED TO BATHE IN, AND THEN STOOD IN THE SUN TO DRY OFF.”

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