The baby on Bharati’s lap could easily pass off for her kid brother. The sari and full sleeve blouse failing to make her appear any older than she really is. Sitting in the small anganwadi centre in an urban slum with a fancy name, Dubai Colony, in Kalaburagi town, Karnataka, she narrates how she got married and ended up with a child when most of her friends have just about finished schooling.
Bharati is the eldest child in a landless family that migrated from Savalagi, an arid village a few kilometres from the district headquarters to Kalaburagi city in North Karnataka about 15 years ago in search of work. Her father became an electrician and mother a construction worker. The area in which she lived and continues to live in — is a warren of houses, open drains, narrow lanes and where pigs forage through dirt — enough indication that migration did little to improve the fortunes of the family. Read more here: