Tin Can Schoolbus

March 31, 2017 8:05 PM

Lively and ramshackle at the same time, the schoolbuses do the job.
posted by MovableBookLady (2 comments total)

How hopeful this is that even in areas of such poverty people are pulling together what little they have, from just bits and pieces, to get their kids an education and a future. They're so charming and colorful too. The children's smiles are so beautiful.

Then you get to the last picture. One of them alongside a thorughly modern SUV. You couldn't pose a bigger visual metaphor for inequality. Not everyone is poor.

As those hopeful feelings are fading you get to the first comment:

Those school " bus " are little bitt spécific off New (and old) Delhi narrow streets.
They are quiet rare in the other India parts. Sometimes the childrens are locked inside!

Locked inside. Scrolling back I notice the bars and wire mesh on some of them. For their safety I had thought. They do look pretty dangerous actually. Hope is lost. Sometimes a bright coat of paint is just a bright coat of paint.
posted by adept256 at 10:11 PM on March 31, 2017

How hopeful this is that even in areas of such poverty people are pulling together what little they have, from just bits and pieces, to get their kids an education and a future.

I don't think you can infer those class dynamics from this set of photos. I went to school in a rickshaw when I was a kid. My family's not poor and I was attending a somewhat famous school. We also had a car. My experiences are from Chennai and ~20 years ago, but my relatives' kids still take rickshaws to school so I don't think it's changed that much.

People so frequently impose their own narratives on india. It's actually made it hard for me to enjoy photos of my own hometown because I immediately think of how photos of india are for western consumption. For that reason, I think it would be great if people "showed their work" more often when talking about India.
posted by yaymukund at 5:03 AM on April 1, 2017 [6 favorites]