October 2013. Siraj Un Nissa, Chilika Dand. The village of around 12,000 people is surrounded by multiple power plant stacks emitting putrid smoke, and overlooked by a fully operational open-cast mine just 50 meters away. Siraj suffers from vitiligo, a skin condition connected to Mercury Poisoning. “I have been sick for the past eight years. The dust from the mine is making it hard for us to live here. There’s no electricity. We get it for one hour and it’s gone. We don’t have a proper house to live in, just a make shift shelter. We don’t have anything. No one cares about the poor.”
