Six-year-old Fiza grabbed her five-year-old sister Saniya by the hand as they scrambled over a couple of basketball-size chunks of concrete studded with rusting rebar. They were heading home after tuition class where they would find dal and rice left out for them on the floor of their hut by their mother who was into the fifth hour of her ten hour day, cleaning a home for someone else and looking after their children. Alone all day, Fiza and Saniya fend for themselves except

Why are you punishing me? You have no education. At least I can write my name, a quivering Sachin retorted to his mother after she beat him with a belt for receiving low marks on his recent school tests. Sachin, his eyes still moist, sat sniffling in embarrassment and pain in a corner of his home - really just a tent made from blue and grey plastic tarp. We arrived just after the beating and sat on stained dusty patches of carpet most likely discarded from an office tower nea