Life with India's Ragpickers
Series Tracks the Pavement Dwellers of Mumbai

March 3, 2002 -- "Rag picking is very territorial," says Julian Crandall Hollick, describing the means of subsistence for the street children of Mumbai, India. "None of this is written down, of course, but everyone knows who has picking rights to which street."

Nawaz, Prakah and some Sadak Chhaps playing Carrom in Byculla, in Mumbai. "I lose to them every time," says Julian Crandall Hollick. Photo: Martine Crandall-Hollick

The boys, many not even teenagers yet, rise before the sun to traverse the streets and back alleys of Mumbai (formerly Bombay), seeking castoffs that can be sold -- glass, plastic, metal. "If you pick up someone else's trash, there'll be a fight," Hollick says. "Trash is status, power, and money for these boys."

Ragpicking on Malabar Hill is the first in a four-part series called "Sadak Chhap" ("Stamp of the Street") that Hollick has produced. The segments will air on Weekend Edition Sunday over the next few months. Each looks at a different aspect of the lives of the young "pavement dwellers" in a neighborhood in Mumbai.

"Sadak Chhap" is a followup to a series called "Apna Street" that Hollick produced in 1995, 1997 and 1998. That series looked at the lives of a group of adult pavement dwellers in the Byculla district of Mumbai who were trying to find a home.

Hollick, an independent radio producer specializing in what are called "international" topics -- which so often just means outside the United States -- has been called a "humanist." One thing he'd rather not be called is a journalist.

"I don't think of myself as a journalist," he writes in an essay about the "Apna Street" series. "Certainly not as a foreign correspondent. I don't get the adrenalin rush that my friend Sylvia Poggioli (of NPR) says she needs every day. I don't like the idea that my story is destined to be like yesterday's newspaper, something to wrap fish and chips in."

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Other Resources

•Pictures and text to go along with the "Sadak Chhap" series.

•The entire "Apna Street" series can be found at Hollick's Web site.

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