How do you follow some of the world's poorest people for three weeks, at a time when fears of the coronavirus have India in a nationwide shutdown?
The first task lay in finding people across India so that the story would be somewhat representative – India has 176 million people who survive on less than $1.90 a day. Access was very difficult during the shutdown, but the photographers managed to find five people/families with different jobs in different parts of India -- a maid, a street vendor, a beggar, a balloon salesman and a watchman. The photographers, Rafiz Maqbool, Rajesh Kumar Singh, Anupam Nath and Channi Anand took considerable risks in making pictures and interviewing these people despite the threat of the virus, giving the world a glimpse of their lives during the lockdown.
Rajesh Dhaikar sleeps on the handcart from which he sells balloons, outside his one room house in Prayagraj, India. Dhaikar has a small balloon stall in a nearby market, rarely earning more than $2.50 a day.
AP Photo / Rajesh Kumar Singh
Rajesh Dhaikar’s wife Suneeta makes tea in her house in Prayagraj, India, APril 2, 2020. Dhaikar has a small balloon stall in a nearby market, rarely earning more than $2.50 a day. Suneeta, makes about $20 a month cleaning homes. They have five children and a bank account with about $6.50 in it.
AP Photo / Rajesh Kumar Singh
Fatima Begum, a widow who sells vegetables on the roadside, holds a photograph of her husband as she poses with her children, from left, Shabnam Akhtar, Mohammad Eliyas, Sabina Akhtar and Sameer in their house on the outskirts of Jammu, India, April 10, 2020. Begum is one among the millions of workers who are part of India’s informal economy that have been hit hardest by the nationwide lockdown, pushing many like her in deeper poverty.
AP Photo / Channi Anand
Paresh Talukdar, right, who lost a leg and a hand sits in his hut as his wife Padumi cleans rice in Jayantipur village in the eastern Indian state of Assam, April 3, 2020. Talukdar supports a family of five on the $2.50 or so he makes in a day by begging.
AP Photo / Anupam Nath
Mina Ramesh Jakhawadiya carries a water can after filling it from a public tap in a slum in Mumbai, India, April 1, 2020. Jakhawadiya makes a living selling cheap plastic goods with her husband on the streets of Mumbai. For her, the nationwide lockdown order means 21 days in a 6-by-9 foot room with five people, no work, little food and much less cash.
AP Photo / Rafiq Maqbool
Mina Ramesh Jakhawadiya, center, scolds her son, Ritik Ramesh, telling him not to go out and play because of the coronavirus, at their home in Mumbai, India, March 30, 2020.
AP Photo / Rafiq Maqbool
The next step was following them – also not easy, since we had to keep going back to the people/families to secure their cooperation for three weeks.
AP was also working under a tight deadline. The story would reach its natural end on April 14, the day the shutdown was supposed to end. (It was extended by two weeks in most areas.) The story then had to be turned around as soon as possible.
Global enterprise reporter Tim Sullivan coordinated the many moving parts along with New Delhi correspondent Emily Schmall. Sullivan also wrote the text story with New Delhi reporter Sheikh Saaliq and contributions from others, including Srinigar corrrespondent Aijaz Hussain, New Delhi photo editor Yirmiyan Arthur and the photographers. The piece contained an incredible level of detail, especially for a story written from a distance in the middle of a shutdown.
This was the first story in an investigative/enterprise project, funded by the Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting, about the impact of the coronavirus on the world’s most vulnerable people.
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