Footwear, soap, toothbrushes and other basic personal needs are sheer luxuries these youngsters can only dream of. The patient beasts are indispensable for bringing drinking water from distances hours away. It is since many days that Mohammad's wife has nothing to prepare for family meals except bread and weak unsweetened tea. Unemployment for men, the traditional family breadwinners, is universal. These luckless children have not been able to have a bath or change of clothing for months.
Most rural youngsters go barefoot, wear repeatedly patched and mended clothing and always go hungry.
Their lives now revolve around the critical daily chore of fetching water from far off places. Child mortality due to malnutrition and the lack of medical care is soaring. They can only be taken to market in the hope that they will fetch some price at the butcher's.