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Children's Profiles
Bhavna
 Bhavna has four sisters and two brothers, both two brothers are younger to all sisters; all the girls feel very responsible for their brothers. Bhavna is the third in the sisters; her elder sister is married. She is a very sharp child, for her age and position in the family. This sharpness can be seen in her studies and also in her work of scrap-picking. Within the younger earners, she earns the most, and therefore there is more pressure on her to earn and she is not able to come to study. Her mother says, “If she goes to study, then how will I feed everybody alone?” But during the 40 days residential camp, her mother sent her also with other sisters.
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, then he starts trembling.”
After returning from the camp, Bhavna says, “Now I like studies very much, I enjoyed every thing 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 note book at home. I have one story book, I try to read that too”.
Against this role she plays in her family, she becomes a child against her elder sister. When some children were running from the camp because they could not get tobacco to eat, she would grind the tree trunk to see if that would work as tobacco for herself. She said she was scare to leave because her elder sister had told her that if she dares to run, she would beat her up.
Madhu
 Madhu is now in class 8th; her mother and father are very happy and hopeful that things may work out differently for someone in their family; different because within the present situations, the family lives in a small house made of mud, cardboard with a plastic roof; they have no toilet space and the big family manages with four buckets of water over two days; they live cooking food once a day with earnings less than they need. Madhu is the first child in the community who is studying beyond class 5.
They are trying for her caste certificate so that she can get a scholarship and it can help in the admissions for higher studies. Madhu’s father had expectation from his elder sons, but good-hearted, they also have to manage their small families within their limited capacities.
At home there are seven members. Mudhu’s papa (Mahtrulal). Mother (Phurphuri didi) and younger brother Arvind earn for the family. Mahtrulal makes boxes and other house holdthings by cutting tin. Phurphuri didi and Arvind earn through scrap picking.
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 this as an off-on part-time option, she now realizes that she needs to plan for it differently.
Yogita
 Her exposure to different things has lead to a faith that things are and can be different. Therefore from an earlier situation of acceptance of things, she now keeps bombarding 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 her early part of the day saying 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 every day 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 comes under continuous odds with 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 up 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 exam that year as had been 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 that things work out for his family, but keeps facing one problem after the other. Yogita, in her school, would write a letter to her brother inside the juvenile home. She asked whether she could use her hindi script to write the way she would speak to him in her own language.
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