The exhibition is a welcome change, especially when our society is becomingincreasingly dominated by middlemen and we often tend to think that thingscome ready made. The choice of Hemant Mehta, a talented photographerrecently trained in France, the land of the famous Cartier Bresson, whosehuman vision has meant so much to so many of our young photographers, isevidently good.

Mehta has shots of the hope with which the migrant worker sees his effortscome to fruition. He has photographed the small, faceless beings inproportion to the grandeur they create. And he captures the grace and easewith which they carry the burden of our industrial civilisation on theirhands.

There is, however, a particularly ironic picture. Everything, the traffic,the people, the houses, all can be swept away; but not those ugly roadsideshrines with ugly iron gates and orange pennants. In these days ofdemolitions everywhere, other than the Sainik farms of the ministry that hassponsored this show, one feels that this effort is a little less thansincere. And indeed, the worker's makeshift huts are missing, as thecontractor's eagle eye; the sweat on the throbbing foreheads of workers andthe size of the actual wage for his task of natural importance. But thenvery few who visited the India International Centre would care to know aboutthings like that. For them, it is perhaps enough to know that projects donot come up as a result of reports alone.

-- Suneet Chopra