Tamil Nadu adolescents capture India workers in images

The old woman looks at the distance in the distance, her hands curled up on a tobacco basket, surrounded by the hundreds of cigarettes that have spent hours rolling by hand.

Photography is one of the various Rashmith T students in their town in Tamil Nadu, with their neighbors who make traditional Indian cigarettes called Beedis.

“Nobody knows about their work. His unfasted stories must be told,” Rashmith to the BBC told.

His images appeared in a recent exhibition on India workers entitled The Insewer Perspective at the Egmore Museum in Chennai.

All photographs were taken by 40 students from the schools administered by the Government of Tamil Nadu, who documented the lives of their own parents or other adults.

From quarry workers to weavers, welders and tailors, the images highlight the diverse and exhausting work carried out by the 400 million workers estimated in India.

Many Beedi rollers, for example, are vulnerable to lung damage and tuberculosis due to their dangerous job, said Rashmitha.

“His homes stink of tobacco, you can’t stay there for a long time,” he said, adding that his neighbors feel outside their homes for hours rolling Beedis.

For every 1,000 cigarettes that roll, they only earn 250 rupees ($ 2.90; £ 2.20), he told the BBC.

In the Erode del Estado district, Jayaraj S captured a photo of his mother Pazhaniammal at work as a brick manufacturer. It is seen pouring a mixture of clay and sand into molds and molding bricks by hand.

Jayaraj had to wake up at 2 in the morning to take the photo, because his mother starts working in the middle of the night.

“She has to start early to avoid the afternoon sun,” he said.

It was only when she embarked on her photography project that really realized the difficulties she has to endure, she added.

“My mother frequently complains of headaches, leg pain, hip pain and sometimes fainted,” he said.

In the district of Madurai, Gopika Lakshmi M captured his father Muthukrishnan selling products from an old truck.

His father has to get a dialysis twice a week after he lost a kidney two years ago.

“It leads to nearby villages to sell products despite being on dialysis,” says Lakshmi.

“We don’t have the luxury of resting at home.”

But despite his serious condition, his father “looked like a hero” as he continued with his exhausting daily routine, Gopika said.

Taking photos with a professional camera was not initially easy, but it was easier after training months with experts, students said.

“I learned to shoot at night, adjust the speed of the shutter and the opening,” said Keerthi, who lives in the Tenkasi district.

For his project, Keerthi chose to document his mother’s daily life, Mushulakshmi, owner of a small store in front of his house.

“Dad is not right, so mom takes care of the store and the house,” he said. “He wakes up at 4 am and works until 11 pm.”

His photos represent his mother’s struggles while traveling long distances through public buses to obtain products for their store.

“I wanted to show through photographs what a woman does to improve the lives of her children,” he said.

Mukesh K spent four days with his father, documenting his work in a quarry.

“My father stays here and comes home only once a week,” he said.

Mikesh’s father works from 3 am to noon, and after a short break, he works from 3pm to 7pm. Win a scarce sum of Around 500 rupees a day.

“There are no beds or mattresses in his room. My father sleeps in empty cardboard boxes in the quarry,” he said. “He suffered an insolation last year because he was working under the hot sun.”

Students, from 13 to 17 years old, are learning several art forms, including photography, as part of an initiative of the Tamil Nadu School Education Department.

“The idea is to make students socially responsible,” said Muthamizh Kalaivizhi, state leader of the Holistic Development Program in the government schools of Tamil Nadu and founder of the Nelam Foundation of the non -governmental organization.

“They documented workers around them. Understanding their lives is the beginning of social change,” he added.

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