A Desert Village (Kherwa, Rajasthan / India, November 2016)

A Desert Village (Kherwa, Rajasthan / India, November 2016)

Population: Around 1,000 or slightly below. Literacy rate: Around 60%. More than half of the female population is unable to read or write.

When you walk through the village, you realize that the city at some point was much bigger than the population numbers indicate. A significant number of buildings have been abandoned and left for decay.

Clearly, Kherwa has seen better days. If I remember correctly, what the guide told me, Kherwa was a stop-over point on the camel based trading routes between East and West. When that changed people started to leave the village.

People on average are poor here, at least by Western European standards. On the left side of this picture, where the boy with the ball and his mother are standing, you see a yellow kind of plate (with a number and some words in Hindu) painted on the frame of the blue door. This yellow marking shows that the family is classified as reliant on public support. This means that the state pays for a kitchen and a roof, and also some subsidy for raw water supply and maybe electricity.
#rajasthan #streetphotography #hpqspurbanandstreetphotos
(Olympus OM-D E-M10, f/5, 1/160, 14 mm, ISO 200)