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Poor take to scavenging for buried riches

Josy Joseph in Ahmedabad

Several poor people in the city are searching for treasures in the debris of dream-houses and plush apartments that came down on January 26 in the massive earthquake.

Overnight, scavenging has become a full-time engagement for several hundred people, most of them living in the shanties lining the Sabarmati river.

"Yesterday I made Rs 500," says Jagdish, dressed in a torn T-shirt and a pair of faded jeans. He admits openly that he could never have dreamt of making so much a money in a day, if not for the earthquake.

His hands are proof of his hard work: the left palm is wrapped in dirty bandage, which covers a deep wound he sustained while searching the debris of apartments and other buildings.

He is just one among the many hundreds in the city who are searching for anything, from treasures to mangled iron pieces, to make a living.

Jagdish, a vegetable vendor till the day of the earthquake, earned his Rs 500 from selling several kilogrammes of iron scrap.

"Some of the flats have collapsed, and there are no people in other apartments, so where can I sell my vegetables?" Jagdish justifies his new-found vocation. While some of the best-known apartments of the city have either fully or partially collapsed, others are lying vacant. Residents are spending their day and night out in the open, or in their vehicles, for fear of another quake.

Says Dinesh Purabia, another one scavenging in the debris near Sardar Patel Bridge at Paldi, on the Sabarmati, "My house too has developed cracks and there is no job to do. So I am searching here."

Jessi Solanki, a young woman feverishly rummaging through the debris, is unmindful of injuries or dangers that it could pose. "If I can make about Rs 50, we can have a good dinner. How else will I feed my kids?"

The main dumping site for the city's debris is one side of the bridge where, even as thousands stare down from above, the scavengers fight it out with the police for going through the debris. Pratap Paramar shows a bleeding cut on his nose. "They beat me with lathis," he says.

"The policemen are chasing us away not for nothing. They are also searching the debris for valuable items," Pratap says, trying to bite down his pain.

"Some policemen have even got silver and gold ornaments from here. That is why they want the poor like us to leave," he claims.

The earthquake did no harm to them. "It is the rich who have died. I was out in the open, my family and I did not face any problems," says Pratap.

Most of the scavengers at the site are from the nearby slum cluster of Kagdivad. Police officials, placed on special duty by the municipal commissioner, say the scavengers are "a nuisance, they are disturbing our work".

Meanwhile, the residents of the city are also increasingly facing the menace of theft. With their valuables dumped mostly in cars, the residents are spending their nights out in the open, exposed to easy theft.

"A few of my neighbours have lost some valuables, but what can we do?" says a resident of Manasi apartments, a portion of which collapsed during the quake.

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