Tabassum Barnagarwala

3 days ago | scroll.in | Tabassum Barnagarwala

Twenty years ago, Nafees Khan travelled 1,500 km from home in search of a job. He found one in Mumbai’s Dharavi, the slum that is home to a large number of small manufacturing and processing units. Today, Khan earns Rs 20,000 a month at a workshop that manufactures grinding machines. He sends most of his income back home to Pratapgarh, Uttar Pradesh. The workshop is also his shelter for the night. Like Khan, thousands of migrant workers have made India’s largest slum their home over several decades.

2 weeks ago | scroll.in | Tabassum Barnagarwala

In January 2020, an official at a primary health centre in Jharkhand told Khageshwar Kumar about a drug-resistant tuberculosis patient who had stopped taking medicines for the last two months. Kumar stepped in. For 18 months, he visited the patient in Parasnath block in Giridih district three times a week, counselling him in sessions that lasted three hours or more. “He had become suicidal. Even his family had given up on his treatment,” Kumar said. “For hours I would talk to him.

2 weeks ago | scroll.in | Tabassum Barnagarwala

Nineteen-year-old Dhruv Gujjar, an undergraduate student of Ahmedabad’s BJ Medical College, was having lunch on the ground floor of a mess in the college on Thursday, when he heard a loud crash. He looked up to see portions of the ceiling falling down. He immediately hid under the table. After a few moments, he saw others fleeing the building. “I ran out too,” Gujjar told Scroll.

1 month ago | scroll.in | Tabassum Barnagarwala

Munni Shaikh and her sister live in a small room in Dharavi, one of the densest and largest slums in Asia. In this poorly lit 100-square-foot room, they do thread-work to earn Rs 250 per day. Right outside their room is an open drain, where rats scurry. Last year, when Shaikh heard of plans to redevelop the slum, she was excited. She submitted documents to government officials as proof of her residence. But now the 36-year-old Shaikh is worried.

1 month ago | scroll.in | Tabassum Barnagarwala

For over two years, Rajeshwar Madankar has struggled with constant body pain and headaches. It began when the 27-year-old farmer from Maharashtra’s Yavatmal district sprayed the insecticide, chlorpyrifos, on his cotton farm one morning. He made the mistake of not covering his face. “That day it was windy, and I accidentally inhaled some of the insecticide,” he said. By the evening, he had a headache. In a few days, he was vomiting almost every evening.