By Adnan Abidi

As a photo-journalist my work is to bring out stories and emotions through pictures. And I have been doing that for the last umpteen number of years. However, after so many years of capturing events that have shocked people across the world, I was about to stumble upon a reality that would be even more shocking than what my camera could capture. It was one such assignment where me and a colleague were to travel to Rajasthan, India. The story was on one of the most prevalent issues of my developing nation—Malnutrition. When I started out from Delhi towards Rajasthan, I did have an idea of what was about to come my way. However, I never anticipated the intensity with which it would move me.

The first stop we made was in a village called Shahbad, the place where we were to actually find some severely malnourished children. After travelling 12 hours by car our visit turned out to be bitter disappointment since we found nothing except empty and ill-maintained hospital wards. After a lot of discussion and research the local doctor at the hospital agreed to take us to the Kasba-Thana village, located at the Rajasthan-Madhya Pradesh border, so that our story could gain perspective and ground. It was this village that brought its first shock for me.

During my wandering through the village I learnt that the way of life in this village was quite different from what I have experienced living in an urban city. In this village, which is home to the Sahariya tribe, women are the bread winners of the family. Not because these women are empowered and belong to an ultra modern tribe, but the men of the tribe have resigned themselves to absolute reckless lives.

The local doctors told me that while most women of the tribe go out and earn daily wages at early hours of the day; their men start to drink around the same time. In fact such exploitation has resulted in the abject poverty of the families and severe malnourishment of their children.

By Adnan Abidi

“Ganges is Holy,” said my boatman as I pointed my camera to photograph devotees half submerged in the blackish brown waters of the sacred river, the second most polluted in India. It was my third day on a photography assignment on Bihar- a sprawling state on the Gangetic plains of eastern India. My brief was to cover the overall progress of Bihar, hence I planned to photograph a bridge under construction over this sacred river. After a couple of shots with my wide angle lens I shifted to telephoto and as I zoomed in I saw a crow, a crow savoring or maybe just sitting on a corpse.

The boatman wasn’t as shocked as I was. This was no extraordinary sight for him. He continued to praise the progress of the state, and its new efficient minister but said things will not change overnight. On seeing me still shocked about the corpse he revealed that as Hinduism describes Moksha as liberation from the cycle of life and death, freedom forever from earthly miseries and sufferings, the holy river Ganges is believed to be a pathway to attain Moksha. And Hindus believe that dying on the banks of this holy river enable a soul to attain Moksha. So at very short intervals, sometime just weeks, people here see corpses floating on the river, and its an accepted phenomenon. He said that’s the way of life here and still there was progress!

I smiled at his optimism. He was all praises about the current government and the development it had brought even though personally he still lived hand-to-mouth. Earning his daily bread was an extreme challenge, for he like many boatmen had no option but to stay in the boat (floating in water) as they could not afford land. Even though there is a lack of basic resources, catastrophic flooding every year, and the lingering impact of poor past governance, there was a ray of hope in Bihar. I wondered if all this progress could bridge the gap between prosperity and poverty- a mammoth task that lay ahead for the current Bihar government.

By Adnan Abidi

The joy of being born in a free country is a gift I received from those who sweat and bled in the struggle for Indian Independence. I accept the fact that I do very little to appreciate that gift. The most I do is fly a kite on August 15th, like many others. Quite a few of my fellow ‘post-independence born’ countrymen have little clue about the struggles our martyrs undertook to achieve what, today, we enjoy with much ingratitude. Freedom has been taken for granted.

The first struggle of Indian Independence was unknown to me, the second, as popular support named it, was the one I witnessed. It was when a 74-year-old Gandhinian, Anna, mobilized a crowd of over a million to crusade against corruption they say has infiltrated to the very roots of the Indian administration.

It was a much-watched movement that kept most of the country glued to their televisions for thirteen days. The media became a window for the 1.21 billion population. And I, as part of that window, got a chance to hold up Anna Hazare’s campaign to the world. The call against corruption came on the same day that India achieved its independence back in 1947, and in the same month as Ramadan, which fell in August this year. Following tradition, I was celebrating my independence by flying a kite when I received two calls — one from a fellow colleague, who informed me that Anna Hazare was praying at Rajghat, and the second from my Amma (mother), who asked me to get dates and fruits, traditionally eaten to end the day’s fast. I was at a crossroads and I had to choose my path.

Handing over the kite’s string to my friend I rushed home, picked up my gear and headed to Rajghat, forgetting about the dates I was asked to bring. Mahatma Gandhi’s memorial isn’t a place I often visit unless on an assignment. So it was that day, when yet again I realized I was one of the last photographers to reach. I shot many frames from all possible angles.

Generations before me had witnessed the power of Indian media as it was instrumental in bringing about the required change. What follows is one such example.

The digital revolution has its pros and cons; on one hand it has amplified the chance of getting a picture in a stampede-like situation and on the other, it has created the stampede-like situation. With the advent of digital technology, the number of publications and media houses has grown, in turn multiplying the number of cameramen and photographers present at an event. Yet it has also increased the number of picture possibilities which in the celluloid days were limited to 36 frames in a film roll. Good or bad there is no going back.

Ignoring my aching jaw, I scrolled through my images to see if I had got the picture, of India’s former telecommunications minister Andimuthu Raja, accused in the 2G spectrum scam. It must have been an elbow of one of the many cameramen or photographers present who were struggling to get the same picture that struck me. I didn’t mind the pain as even my elbow hurt a bit. I was sure I wasn’t the only one with a sore jaw, of late we photographers were accustomed to it.

Court assignments as we call them, isn’t an assignment a photographer is keen on doing. But it has become mandatory as the picture compliments the newspaper headlines – lately they were related to the 2G Spectrum scam, a $39.16 billion scam that shook the nation. One after another the suspects have been zeroed in as the Indian judiciary tightens the noose on everyone involved. Every now and then someone is produced in court and we photographers find ourselves in the similar stampede-like situations.

Since December Reuters has covered a number of these types of events- be it a courthouse or the Central Bureau of Investigation headquarters.

I remember one occasion when Raja was to be brought to the Patiala House court. I didn’t count but at least one photographer and at least three TV cameramen were present from each electronic media house. Unplanned events like this one become very chaotic, as hordes of photographers jump into a narrow area to get first a good picture, second a usable one – the latter is mandatory. As Raja climbed down from a government vehicle he was surrounded by photographers. I struggled as I made my way with my wide-angle lens and landed in front of him. I was lucky to reach there as my counterparts from other organizations were shooting blindly, I didn’t take my hand off the shutter release, and shot hundreds of frames, 6 or 8 of them were usable and one I consider good.