The Dignified Poor

INDIA | Saturday, 8 December 2012 | Views [372] | View Smaller Image

An overcrowded train transports workers, and those looking for work, from town to town. In the middle of the Indian summer, with temperatures exceeding 40°C (104°F), the conditions within those 3rd class, non air conditioned carriages are sweltering. Yet day after day, these trains are full to over-flowing.

In a remote village in Bihar, a young boy carefully sets himself up to complete his school homework. The night is almost unbearably hot, and the flickering candle throws out a tiny sphere of light. Education is increasingly seen by the village elders as the way forward and out of poverty, with more boys and girls now starting, and staying, in school than ever before.

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A doctor at an AIDS clinic takes a moment to try to capture a breeze after power to the building cuts out again. The dirty windows and back street location belies the dedication, care and love the staff exhibit to their patients - patients who are all extremely poor, marginalised, and ridiculed. In this clinic the patients are treated like humans, giving them a dignity and a sense of hope they would otherwise never have seen.

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The Dignified Poor

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