‘There is a need to tell their untold stories’: Capture the workers of India in adolescent pictures.

The elderly woman enters the distance, her hands penetrated on a tobacco basket, surrounded by hundreds of cigarettes, which she has spent hours in rolling by hand.

This photo is one of the many staggering people by Rashta Tea in his village in Tamil Nadu, characterizing their neighbors who make traditional Indian cigarettes called Beedis.

“Nobody knows about their work. There is a need to tell his untold stories,” Rashmita told the BBC.

His photos were recently depicted in an exhibition about the laborers of India, titled an ignorant perspective at the Egmore Museum in Chennai.

All the photos were taken by 40 students from the government-run schools in Tamil Nadu, who documented the lives of their own parents or other adults.

From mines workers to weavers, welder to tailor, pictures highlight the diverse, backbreaking work done by the estimated 400 million laborers in India.

For example, many BD rollers, due to their dangerous work, are unsafe for lung damage and tuberculosis, Rashmita said.

He said, “Tobacco has been raked in their homes, you can’t stay there for a long time,” he said that her neighbors sit outside their homes for hours outside their homes.

They rolled for every 1,000 cigarettes, they earn only Rs 250 ($ 2.90; £ 2.20), he told the BBC.

In the state’s Erode district, Jayaraj captured a picture of his mother Pajaniuml at work as a brick manufacturer. It is seen putting a mixture of soil and sand in molds and giving bricks shape by hand.

Jayaraj had to get up at 2 o’clock to snap the picture, as his mother starts working in the middle of the night.

“He must start early to escape from the afternoon sun,” he said.

He said that it was only when he started his photography project that he really realized the difficulties he had to bear, he said.

“My mother often complains of headache, leg pain, hip pain and sometimes fainting,” he said.

In Madurai district, Gopika Lakshmi M captured her father Muthukrishnan to sell goods from an old van.

Her father has to receive a dialysis twice a week after losing a kidney two years ago.

“He drives to sell goods in nearby villages, despite being on dialysis,” says Lakshmi.

“We do not have the luxury of resting at home.”

But despite his serious condition, his father “looked like a hero” as he carried forward with his fierce daily routine, Gopika said.

The students said that it was not easy to take pictures with a professional camera initially, but it became easier after months of training with experts.

“I learned how to shoot at night, adjust the shutter speed and aperture,” said Karthi, who lives in Tenkasi district.

For her project, Karthi chose her mother, Muthulakshmi’s daily life, who owns a small shop in front of her house.

“Dad is not well, so Mam takes care of both the shop and the house,” he said. “She wakes up at 4 am and works till 11 am.”

Her photos reflect her mother’s struggles because she covers long distances through public buses, which are stuff for her store.

“I wanted to show through the pictures what a woman does to improve her children’s lives,” she said.

Mukesh K. spent four days with his father, documenting his work in a mine.

“My father lives here and comes home only once a week,” he said.

Mukesh’s father works from 3 pm to noon, and after a brief rest, works from 3 pm to 7 pm. He earns a small amount About 500 rupees a day.

“There are no beds or mattresses in their room. My father sleeps on an empty cardboard boxes in the mine,” he said. “He faced a sunstroke last year as he was working under the hot sun.”

Students between the ages of 13 to 17, as part of an initiative by the Tamil Nadu School Education Department, are learning various art forms, including photography.

The state leadership of the overall development program in Tamil Nadu’s government schools and founder of the Non-Governmental organization Neelam Foundation, Muthmez Kaliviji said, “The idea is to make students socially responsible.”

He said, “He documented the working people around him. Understanding his life is the beginning of social change.”

Follow BBC News India Instagram, YouTube, X And Facebook,