By Flint Jurgens

The elderly woman gazes wistfully into the distance, her hands curled over a basket of tobacco, surrounded by the hundreds of cigarettes she has spent hours rolling by hand.

The photograph is one of several snapped by student Rashmitha T in her village in Tamil Nadu, featuring her neighbours who make traditional Indian cigarettes called beedis.

“No-one knows about their work. Their untold stories need to be told,” Rashmitha told the BBC.

Her pictures were featured in a recent exhibition about India’s labourers titled The Unseen Perspective at the Egmore Museum in Chennai.

All the photographs were taken by 40 students from Tamil Nadu’s government-run schools, who documented the lives of their own parents or other adults.

From quarry workers to weavers, welders to tailors, the pictures highlight the diverse, backbreaking work undertaken by the estimated 400 million labourers in India.

Many beedi rollers, for instance, are vulnerable to lung damage and tuberculosis due to their dangerous work, said Rashmitha.

“Their homes reek of tobacco, you cannot stay there long,” she said, adding that her neighbours sit outside their homes for hours rolling beedis.

For every 1,000 cigarettes they roll, they only earn 250 rupees ($2.90; £2.20), she told the BBC.

In the state’s Erode district, Jayaraj S captured a photo of his mother Pazhaniammal at work as a brick maker. She is seen pouring a clay and sand mixture into moulds and shaping bricks by hand.

Jayaraj had to wake up at 2am to snap the picture, because his mother begins working in the middle of the night.

“She has to start early to avoid the afternoon sun,” he said.

It was only when he embarked on his photography project that he truly realised the hardships she has to endure, he added.

“My mother frequently complains of headaches, leg pain, hip pain and sometimes faints,” he said.

In the Madurai district, Gopika Lakshmi M captured her father Muthukrishnan selling goods from an old van.

Her father has to get a dialysis twice a week after he lost a kidney two years ago.

“He drives to nearby villages to sell goods despite being on dialysis,” Lakshmi says.

“We don’t have the luxury of resting at home.”

But despite his serious condition, her father “looked like a hero” as he carried on with his gruelling daily routine, said Gopika.

Taking pictures with a professional camera was not easy initially, but it got easier after months of training with experts, said the students.

“I learned how to shoot at night, adjust shutter speed and aperture,” said Keerthi, who lives in the Tenkasi district.

For her project, Keerthi chose to document the daily life of her mother, Muthulakshmi, who owns a small shop in front of their house.

“Dad is not well, so mum looks after both the shop and the house,” she said. “She wakes up at 4am and works until 11pm.”

Her photos depict her mother’s struggles as she travels long distances via public buses to source goods for her store.

“I wanted to show through photographs what a woman does to improve her children’s lives,” she said.

Mukesh K spent four days with his father, documenting his work at a quarry.

“My father stays here and comes home only once a week,” he said.

Mukesh’s father works from 3am till noon, and after a brief rest, works from 3pm to 7pm. He earns a meagre sum of about 500 rupees a day.

“There are no beds or mattresses in their room. My father sleeps on empty cardboard boxes in the quarry,” he said. “He suffered a sunstroke last year because he was working under the hot sun.”

The students, aged 13 to 17, are learning various art forms, including photography, as part of an initiative by the Tamil Nadu School education department.

“The idea is to make students socially responsible,” said Muthamizh Kalaivizhi, state lead of Holistic Development programme in Tamil Nadu’s government schools and founder of non-government organisation Neelam Foundation.

“They documented the working people around them. Understanding their lives is the beginning of social change,” he added.

By Jena Aldredge

Deputy senate president, Senator Jubril Barau and the minister of Agriculture and Food Security, Senator Abubakar Kyari have declared that the reforms in the agriculture sector by President Bola Tinubu are producing the desired results.

The duo spoke at an agriculture and human capital development empowerment programme organised by the senator representing Kwara Central, Salihu Mustapha, in Ilorin, the Kwara State capital.

Barau said agriculture and human capital development are key areas for national development.

Senator Mustapha distributed empowerment tools and materials to over 2,500 constituents in Ilorin.

At the event tagged, “Alubarika 1.0 Agricultural and Human Capital Development Empowerment Programme” and held at the Lower Niger River Basin Development Authority’s premises in Ilorin, Barau said there is no need to waste much time talking about the importance of agriculture to every society. Agriculture is the sine qua non to survival of any society.

“It is the foundation of any society because without food, no life. No wonder, the Senate decided to pick Mustapha as its Agriculture Committee chair.

He is an outstanding person and a party leader that knows how to go about it.

“We have all decided to come here and share this moment with our brother, Senator Saliu Mustapha because of this great empowerment programme for constituents in the area of agriculture and human capital development.

“These are key areas that are very important to our national development “Because we don’t need to waste much time talking about the importance of agriculture in every society. Agriculture is sine qua non to the survival of every society because without food no life.

“And this is a cardinal programme of this administration and the renewed Hope of Mr President to provide food for all.

“No wonder the constituents decided to pick Saliu Mustapha, who is an outstanding person and party leader in this country.

“He is a very friendly human being, industrious and peaceful, who connects with everybody in the Senate. In fact, you’ve done the right thing by electing him.

“All the time he’s going to speak on the floor of the Senate, it’s about what is going to come to Kwara,” Barau said

In his address, Kyari said the ongoing reforms initiated by President Tinubu on food security were working.

He said, “We have seen that food is not only available, but the prices are gradually becoming affordable.

“That is to show that the president is working for the best interest of all Nigerians. I would commend my partners in the Federal Ministry of Agriculture and Food Security for doing well and being alive with the aspiration of the president.”

Earlier, Senator Mustapha said his empowerment scheme aligned with Tinubu’s Renewed Hope agenda, adding that, “we took time to train people interested in maintaining, repairing and restoring solar panels.”

Mustapha said the empowerment was meant to make the beneficiaries, who included market women, farmers, artisans and trade associations, to become self-reliant.

He said apart from the physical empowerment materials, the beneficiaries had been trained and certificated on how to use the tools and carry out their trade as entrepreneurs.

Mustapha said: “Today’s programme is just a symbolic one to flag off what we intend to do with most of our people we have trained.

“This time around, we decided that it is not only about giving out sewing machines or giving out things to people and they will not value it.

“We decided to put them through a series of programmes and training. In fact, we are missing out on one vital aspect. Everywhere you go now, you’ll see solar streetlights.

“We took time to train our indigenes who are interested in learning to maintain, to repair and to install solar panels.

“The most fascinating part was when I came during a training exercise and I saw a lot of women who were part of it and I asked, ‘in our community here that I thought was conservative for women to climb roof and poles?’

“I saw them in their overall, they are fully trained now on how to install, repair and maintain solar inverters. All of them are here too and they will get their working tools.

“Most of the people you see here under the canopies are not just political spectators, these are carefully chosen beneficiaries who have gotten through training. We are not holding a political rally or jamboree here.”

Apart from the prior entrepreneurial training and certification of the beneficiaries by the lawmaker, empowerment materials distributed during the event which was well attended by dignitaries and beneficiaries, included 250 deep freezers, tricycles, 100 live cows, 400 grinding machines, eight tractors for all the local governments in Kwara Central, vehicles, gas powered oven with cylinders, 400 irrigation machines, full university scholarship for 200 students, various food stuffs, fertilizers and farm inputs and power transformers among others.

Among the dignitaries at ceremony were the deputy senate leader, Senator Lola Ashiru (Kwara South); senate chief whip, Mohammed Monguno; chairman, Senate Committee on Banking, Insurance and Other Financial Institutions, Senator Adetokunbo Abiru; national secretary of the All Progressives Congress (APC), Senator Ajibola Basiru; Chief Imam of Ilorin, Muhammadu Bashir, Emir of Ilorin, Sulu Gambari, represented by Modibo Sulu Gambari and Senator Aminu Iyal Abass.