Bhavna has four sisters and two brothers. Both brothers are younger to all the sisters so all the girls feel very responsible for their brothers. Bhavna is the third sister and her elder sister is married. She is a very sharp child, especially considering her age and position in the family. Her intelligence can be seen in her studies and also in her work of scrap-picking. Among the younger earners, she earns the most, and therefore there faces more pressure to earn instead of studying. Her mother says, “If she goes to study, then how will I feed everybody alone?” Bhavna says, “I want to be at home because Maa and Baba fight a lot. If I am there, I get angry with him, then he keeps quiet. If Baba beats Maa, I get in between them and stop him. Many a times, he comes in the evening and demands money for his alcohol; if I don’t give him any, he starts trembling.”

However, during a 40 day residential camp, her mother sent her and her sisters also to study. After returning from the camp, Bhavna says, “Now I like studies very much, I enjoyed everything there, getting up early in the morning and having a bath, brushing teeth, sitting in the evenings together and talking about what had happened through the day.” She also says, “I will surely come whenever there is a camp again; I open and read the notebook at home. I have one story book, I try to read that too”.

In opposition to the role of responsibility she plays in her family, Bhavna becomes a child against her elder sister. When some children were running from the camp because they could not get tobacco to chew, she said she was scared to leave because her elder sister had told her that if she dares to run, she would beat her up. Instead, Bhavna would grind the tree trunk to see if that would work as tobacco for her!

Madhu is now in class 9th. She is the first child in the community who is studying beyond class 5. Her mother and father are very happy and hopeful that things may work out differently for her than the rest of the family. In their present situation the family lives in a small house made of mud and cardboard with a plastic roof, they have no toilet space. The big family manages with only four buckets of water every two days; they cook food only once a day and earn much less than they need.

The family has seven members, Madhu’s papa (Mahtrulal), Mother (Phurphuri didi) and younger brother Arvind earn for the family. Mahtrulal makes boxes and other household things by cutting tin. Phurphuri didi and Arvind earn through scrap-picking. Her family is trying for her caste certificate so that she can get a scholarship and gain admissions for higher studies. Madhu’s father had expectations from his elder sons, but while good-hearted, they also have to manage their small families within their limited capacities.

Madhu studied in a boarding school last year. This one year experience showed her how rigorously studies fit into the routine of children from middle-class families. Where earlier she would see studies as an on-off part-time option, she now realizes that she needs to plan for it differently. Her exposure to different things has lead to a faith that things are and can be different. Therefore from earlier feelings of acceptance of the situation of her family, she now keeps challenging her parents for their routine of drinking and fighting at home. She is very attached to both her parents and they also know her as a person, and as their growing up daughter.

Her exposure to different things has lead to a faith that things are and can be different. Therefore from earlier feelings of acceptance of the situation of her family, she now keeps challenging her parents for their routine of drinking and fighting at home. She is very attached to both her parents and they also know her as a person and as their growing up daughter.

In her English class, Yogita used the word ‘sad’ describing the early part of her day. She does not like to work on the streets. Her mother says she does not ask her to go far scrap-picking but she does it on her own. For different reasons, Yogita goes to work everyday in the mornings. But by 1:30 in the afternoon when the school van comes to pick up the children, she is ready with her water bottle. She comes to study on most days of the week.

Yogita belongs to the ‘Pardhi’ community which is a denotified tribe. Like other families in the basti, Yogita’s family also is continuously challenged by the police. In January, her mother Nazma and brother Mahil were unlawfully detained at the thana and later sent to jail. Her mother could not get bail for two months, and this threw the children’s lives in turmoil. The father sold his tempo and the children were working all the time. Yogita was usually absent and could not give the 5th class exam that year as she had planned earlier.

Her elder brother, Mahil, was again caught later. This time, her father did not take him out from the juvenile home saying he did not know how to make sure the children’s lives could go on course. He has tried a lot of things to improve the situation of his family, but keeps facing one problem after the other. In school, Yogita would write a letter to her brother inside the juvenile home. She asked her teacher whether she could use her hindi script to write the way she would speak to him in her own language.