The Ajmer Shatabdi pulls into the New Delhi station every night at around 11 pm. During the six-hour journey from Ajmer, the train serves tea, snacks, soup, dinner and dessert–more food than an average person can eat in that time.
As soon as passengers start getting off the train, ragpickers jump in and start scrounging for waste material and leftovers–samosas, biscuits, plastic bottle, wraps and so on. They are a part of India’s massive reserve of ragpickers–their numbers are estimated between 1.5 million and 4 million; Delhi itself has over