Gurupal Patel, a 65 year old illiterate man lost his wife Ratham Bai due to cancer. In early 2016 Ratham Bai fell ill. Gurupal Patel took her to the hospital where they referred her to Raipur. After the tests, doctors told him that Ratham had cancer (Gurupal Patel doesn’t remember if the cancer was in the mouth or throat). He took a loan of 70000 rupees to treat her and the treatment went on for 9 months. Finally in February 2017 Ratham Bai passed away. Gurupal Patel doesn’t know the cause for the illness. He works as a daily wage worker at TPP and earns 200 rupees a day. If he’s lucky he gets work for 15 days a month. Once he was a farmer and now he’s struggling to eat 3 meals a day.

30 years ago along with the rest of the villagers, they were relocated to Charpara village. Before he was a farmer. He was cultivating vegetables, rice and pulses two seasons a year on his two acres of farmland. He had to hand over the farmland to NTPC with minimum compensation and he took up daily wage work at the NTPC.

Charpara village, Korba district, Chhattisgarh, India, 2017.