Chandauli, Mahoba district, Uttar Pradesh: Basoor’s husband died last year. A slow painful death. The 80-year-old Basoor does not look at you in the eye while recounting how her husband wasted away due to hunger
Photograph by: Prashanth Vishwanathan
Pratappura village, Chhatarpur district, Madhya Pradesh: Creepers have made this house their home. It has been abandoned for four-five years. People have left the village to work elsewhere
Photograph by: Prashanth Vishwanathan
Seelaum, Chhatarpur district, Madhya Pradesh: Sixty-year-old Ram Charan is used to taking solitary walks.
He stays with his wife. Ram Charan’s two children, Babloo and Pramod, work as labourers in Delhi. He lost his farmland seven years ago when it was declared a forest area. Ram Charan says, “Who will employ an old man?”
Photograph by: Prashanth Vishwanathan
Seelaum village, Chhatarpur district, Madhya Pradesh: Razi Wasoor is bedridden in the Harijan colony. The 85- year-old is blind and suffers several diseases. Her children labour in Kashmir as stone cutters and have not been home for three years. When Razi needs help, she calls out aloud until some passerby responds. She is not registered for old age pension
Photograph by: Prashanth Vishwanathan
Chandauli, Mahoba district, Uttar Pradesh: There is some use for failed crops. A woman cuts them for her cattle
Photograph by: Prashanth Vishwanathan
Chandauli, Mahoba district, Uttar Pradesh:
Abandoned livestock roam freely. They are too expensive to maintain. With no fodder, the animals quickly meet the inevitable end
Photograph by: Prashanth Vishwanathan
Pratappura, Chhatarpur district, Madhya Pradesh: The fly-ridden roti lies around in 60-year-old Pirbhu’s house. His two elder sons have migrated to Chandigarh to work as stone cutters.
They do not send any money home. Pirbhu takes care of the younger two sons. He does not get any employment under the National Rural Employment Guarantee Act
Photograph by: Prashanth Vishwanathan
