Ganga Nagar: has a Gond community of about 120 households. These families moved out from Raipur - now a city in (in Chattisgarh - about 30 – 40 years ago, with the present generation of mothers having not been born there. They traveled in groups, working in different parts of the state, until they finally settled in this particular location in Bhopal in the early 1980s.

The community is very close knit, with all the families having close kinship with each other. Most of the men, with exception of 3 people, are not skilled laborers. Most community members stand at the unskilled labour market looking for daily work, and in a successful month, manage to get 15 days of labor. For several years now, they have been doing digging or other work as construction labour. Some have slowly started assisting in masonry and painting works. A few young boys work as cooking labour in marriage parties. Many younger children 9-12 are also attracted to this work. Traditionally, women did not work outside their homes. Historically, there has been no adult literate member in the community.

Gautam Nagar: This is a small settlement of about 50 houses on a plot of private land no bigger than 400ft in an upcoming area of the city. The community is comprised of Ojha (Gonds). The first “house” in this settlement was built in early 1980 and many other families streamed in later. Over the years, the community has been asked to leave over a number of times. The men in the family traditionally do tin work (as making tin boxes and buckets) from scrap metal and repairing the utensils used at homes. With the tin market almost eliminated by plastic, this livelihood has become a minor source of earning among some of the elder members of the families, creating a large dependence on children's and young adults' fluctuating earnings. Most young boys are engaged in loading and unloading jobs in a nearby Pepsi godown. The children go for scrap picking, begging, seasonally working in marriages as light-bearers, dish-cleaners, etc.

Being a small basti on private land, there is much hostility from the neighbourhood. Fearful of eviction at any time, the families make almost no investment in strengthening and improving their housing structures. There is no ready access to spaces for toilet use. Being unauthorized residents, their power of negotiation is very low and mostly depends on political favours of the local Corporator.

Rajeev Nagar: This is a fairly large slum. We were initially only working with the Pardhi community here, but the group has enlarged to include the communities of Sapera, Kathputli, and Mochi. We have also started work in another part of the city, Nayapura, where another extension of the Pardhi community lives.

Though traditionally hailing from Gujarat, the Pardhi families come from many areas around Bhopal, primarily from a belt of villages between Sehore and Ashta. Most of the families own land or other property in their native villages. This keeps a close bond between them and the village, in the sense that they go back at time for sowing, harvest, and for festivals. Carrying the label of a 'de-notified' tribe, the community is at constant odds with the police. This breaks family stability in multiple ways, with one or more members being harassed and beaten up in the thana (police station), needing to arrange money to visit in jail or to pay off lawyers and police, leaving their homes for a few months at a stretch when things become unbearable here, and scrap-picking with more pressure and rigour to pay off loans taken for police bribes.

The women and children in the community are major earners of the family. They are primarily scrap collectors. Their work takes the form of scrap-picking (of almost everything conceivable), breaking down the material collected (as different elements of a bulb), sorting of it and the final selling to wholesalers. The men help in the latter tasks. There are some children who go to the market for begging, and others who regularly beg for food in houses in the vicinity in addition to the rag-picking tasks. A small number of men work during melas (fairs) or go places for selling trinkets.

The Kathputli Mohalla is financially a marginally better area, but the majority of children do not go to schools.

Basti near Sargam: The settlement is about 15 years old. When the Habibganj Railway Colony, about half a kilometre from this slum site, was vacated by the government, the families who had been staying at this location were given alternative land in Bagh Mughalia (a village about 10 km. away). As peoples employment base was in town, some families have returned and made their ‘jhuggis’ in a vacant piece of low-lying land along a canal.

The slum has a mixed population, with Muslim families from old Bhopal and some Maharashtrian families with strong exposure to Ambedkar movement. There are 19 families living here, who are primarily involved in either scrap-picking directly, or in serving as buying and selling points of the material collected through scrap-picking. Numerous women and children come in to rag pick from Bagh Mughalia slum and children from the poor families residing in the neighbourhood (being a commercial area, there are certain families that work during the day and sleep under the thelas or the pavement at night) sell their daily collections there. There are a few garages in the area that provide employment to the young boys. For this reason, there are some boys who stay here independently also.

Bapu Nagar: This is a large basti, with about 65 families of the 'Lohar’ (Kanjar) community. These families make jhaare, repair tools, and sometimes take small version of a welding machine on their cycles for repairing windows (or other iron frames) in houses. They traditionally come from Rajasthan, living in the areas adjoining Mandsaur district on the MP border. There are also some families who come from Dewas in M.P. The women and children work in dairy farms, where they go and make cow dung cakes ‘kande thepna ka kaam’. The deal between the dairy owners and community members is that one day they work for the dairy and the next day they make these cakes for themselves (to be used as fuel). They also go much further to collect wood for fuel. As with the Pardhis of Rajiv Nagar, the ‘Jhaarewalas’ are also isolated from other parts of the slum. Part of this could be due to their reputation of being tough men and ready to fight (even on hire).

Banjara Basti: This is a developing slum located over a large piece of land that comes in the submergence area of the Kolar dam. People have come here in community groups and built their houses in separate patches over the past 12 years. The latest inclusion is the Lohar community (a part of Bapu Nagar).

A majority of the men in the communities are engaged in stone and boulder breaking work. Some are also involved in masonry, dairy, painting and as mechanics. Women either do stone work, or work as domestic help small time service, as in a crèche. Some children work in small hotels, scrap-pick or work in the home. There are some who work in the dairy unit (distributing milk and cleaning cows). A significant number of kids have been enrolled in schools at some time, and have dropped out from schools or just have their names enrolled without attending. The Banjara and the Lohar community have the larger majority of children not going to school at all.