Ticketless Travellers: New Multimedia Website Documents Precarious Lives in Delhi
The website Ticketless Travellers (https://ticketless-travellers.info/) features writings, pictures, videos, audioscapes, and drawings created by working-class residents of Delhi. Presented in Hindi and English, these narratives showcase an intimate view of the megapolis as seen through the eyes of its labourers. The project draws on 15 years of anthropological research by Ursula Rao, Director at the Max Planck Institute for Social Anthropology, in collaboration with Ankur Society for Alternatives in Education.
First-hand Perspectives on Everyday Life in India
“We are delighted to announce the new website, which will finally make visible the fantastic work of these passionate young people who have found a wide variety of forms to share their thoughts about the world in which they live,” says Ursula Rao. “The multilingual online publication format of Ticketless Travellers means that these stories will reach an audience of people from a wide variety of social, economic, and educational backgrounds.” Ticketless Travellers is an ongoing project. At the time of its launch, the website features a chapter on health topics. Additional chapters are planned on experiences during the COVID pandemic, informal banking structures, and climate change as experienced by the street dwellers of Delhi. “This website is for everyone interested in India and its people. With its first-hand perspective of the working class, it will be of special value to students of South Asia studies. The unique engagement with the modern Hindi language will be illuminating for Indologists, while researchers of medical anthropology and public medicine will find rich material in the shared narratives,” says Kavita Dasgupta, editor of the website Ticketless Travellers.
Resettlement to the Periphery
For the last 15 years, Rao has been working with the employees of Ankur Society for Alternatives in Education to help document the lives of marginalized people in Delhi. This material forms a valuable archive of perspectives that seldom appear in conventional media reports. “Initially I was interested in the life courses of Delhi slum residents who lost house and home when their informal dwellings in the centre of the city were demolished as part of a large-scale gentrification programme.” People were moved to a resettlement colony on the outskirts of the city; in return, they were promised a piece of land of their own, if only a small one. The new settlements were located more than 40 km from the centre with little possibilities for work, so many people found it difficult to gain a foothold in this new place. “Resettlement came with many restrictions and created new forms of precarity. For example, the plots of land families were allocated had a lease period of only 10 years and it was unclear what would happen after that,” explains Rao. Today the settlement is firmly established. The website gives voice to the people of these and other similar neighbourhoods as they report about their lives and experiences.
An Archive of Life Stories
During her fieldwork with the residents of the slums, Rao learned about Ankur, a non-profit educational organization that empowers young people to use texts to reflect on their lives and document and share their experiences with others. “Sharmila Bhagat, the director of Ankur, arranged for me to participate in their writing classes and regular assemblies,” says Rao. “As they wrote down episodes of their everyday lives, I realized I was witnessing the creation of an unusual local archive. The stories constitute a one-of-a-kind collection of experiences of a marginalized group.” Sabiha Halima, one of the contributors to Ticketless Travellers, describes what inspired her to start writing: “On joining Ankur, I discovered the courage to express myself. I started paying attention and reflecting upon those ordinary, everyday stories of people which are discarded as unimportant. Through my writing, I try to bring these stories to light.”
New Perspectives for Research
The collection of texts, photos, and videos documents the everyday lives of people who survive under precarious conditions and creatively respond to their situation. The writing workshops organized by Ankur empower participants to recount their experiences while casting a critical and analytical gaze on social relations in India. “For anthropologists, it is a tremendous opportunity to be able to share in these processes of gaining insight from the viewpoint of the writers,” explains Rao. “These texts describe how people respond on a local level to contemporary problems that are of global relevance and profoundly impact lives everywhere in the world. For example, we can see how Indians deal with climate change or digitalization of the health system – topics that concern us as well and will continue to be of immense relevance in the future.”
More Information:
PDF-Brochure “Ticketless Travellers” with texts and photographs by Ankur contributors.
Website: https://ticketless-travellers.info/
Financial support for the project is currently provided by the Max Planck Institute for Social Anthropology. Other former sponsors include: Leipzig University, the German Research Foundation, and the Australian Research Council.
Contact for this press release
Prof. Dr. Ursula Rao
Max Planck Institute for Social Anthropology
Advokatenweg 36, 06114 Halle (Saale)
Tel.: 0345 2927-100
E-mail: office.rao@eth.mpg.de
https://www.eth.mpg.de/rao
Kavita Dasgupta
Max Planck Institute for Social Anthropology
Advokatenweg 36, 06114 Halle (Saale)
Tel.: 0345 2927-170
E-mail: dasgupta@eth.mpg.de
PR contact
Stefan Schwendtner
Press and Public Relations
Max-Planck-Institut für ethnologische Forschung
Advokatenweg 36, 06114 Halle (Saale)
Tel.: 0345 2927-425
E-mail: schwendtner@eth.mpg.de