Locked-down with blood on the tracks
• Aurangabad, Maharashtra

Locked-down with blood on the tracks

The 16 labourers – 8 of them Gond Adivasis – run over by a goods train on May 8 near Aurangabad district in Maharashtra were all in their 20s and 30s, and from Umaria and Shahdol districts of Madhya Pradesh

May 10, 2020 | Pratishtha Pandya

‘Maybe someday they will appreciate my work’

On the train from Beldanga to Kolkata, amid vendors of China-made trinkets, Sanjay Biswas tries to sell his hand-crafted wooden items, hoping passengers won't bargain too much and will allow him a small profit

March 11, 2019 | Smita Khator

Trying hard to dodge this bullet

Rameshbhai Patel of Gujarat’s Kheda district might soon have to give up some of his land for the Ahmedabad-Mumbai bullet train. He and many others are strongly opposed to the project

March 7, 2019 | Ratna

Slow train, hard work, low wages, long days
• South 24 Parganas, West Bengal

Slow train, hard work, low wages, long days

Many women domestic workers travel every day from faraway stations on the fringes of the Sundarbans to south Kolkata. The crush of the long train journey adds to the demands of their ceaseless workdays

December 28, 2018 | Urvashi Sarkar

Travelling on the Firewood Express
and • Chitrakoot, Uttar Pradesh

Travelling on the Firewood Express

Left with few livelihood options, Adivasis and Dalits from villages on the border of Uttar Pradesh and Madhya Pradesh take the train to various towns to sell firewood and earn a few hundred rupees after a hard day

October 9, 2018 | Akshay Gupta

Three labourers in a train
• Dhamtari, Chhattisgarh

Three labourers in a train

Conversations from the packed Raipur-Dhamtari train, which carries daily wage workers along the 66-kilometre route. But the state has recently shortened the track, cutting off this narrow gauge lifeline for many

September 12, 2018 | Purusottam Thakur
Collecting 6,000 leaves a day for a living

Tulshi Bhagat of Murbichapada in Thane works 32 hours 15 times a month to sell leaves, besides doing farm work and house work – and hopes that educating her children will lift them out of this hard labour

May 3, 2018 | Jyoti Shinoli
‘Captain Elder Brother’ and the whirlwind army

At 94, a forgotten hero of India’s struggle for freedom returns to the scene of his most daring exploit in the anti-British Raj uprising that saw a parallel government established in Satara, Maharashtra, in 1943

October 30, 2016 | P. Sainath
There's a slow, slow train coming...
• Gwalior, Madhya Pradesh

There's a slow, slow train coming...

and if you’re on top of it, keep your head down

April 13, 2016 | Ritayan Mukherjee

No ticket, will travel
• Anantapur, Andhra Pradesh

No ticket, will travel

Andhra migrants search for work in Kerala

June 15, 2015 | Rahul M.

The mobile gatekeeper
• Raipur, Chhattisgarh

The mobile gatekeeper

Meet Kanhaiyalal, a mobile gatekeeper, who opens and shuts 16 railway gates over a 68-kilometre journey

February 5, 2015 | P. Sainath