Had it not been for acute unemployment and poverty, these young people accompanying the pilgrims as porters would never have taken up the hazardous job, say family members and activists, noting that it would always be very difficult for them to escape the vicious cycle unless drastic measures are taken to improve their lot.

``Poverty drives these young people to take up the hazardous job. Although many families have been engaged in this during the annual yatra to Mansarovar for many years now, to call it a family profession and to say that people take to it on their free will would be a gross misrepresentation of the ground realities,'' says Dev Krishan Phakliyat, president of the `Sanjiwani Swayam SeviSangha' -- a voluntary organisation here.

Heart-rending scenes were witnessed a few days back as the bloated and badly decomposed body of Subhas (18), who accompanied the ill-fated 12th batch as a porter and lost his life in the landslides, was brought to the upgraded primary health centre at Dharchula -- 58 km from the mishap site at Malpa and 620 km from Delhi. Subhas -- the eldest son of Ten Singh -- was a high school student and had taken the trip as a porter to earn his tuition fees.

Not very far away from the nauseating scenes of the hospital, in the far corner of their small house sits Prema, the young sister of Gokaram Singh Garbiyal (17), who also perished in the landslide with the pilgrims. Several attempts to talk to Prema fail to elicit a response as she sits on the floor cradling her little baby in the lap -- numbed by the devastating loss of a dear one. ``When we tried to draw media attention to the plight of the porters as all the focus was concentrated on the pilgrims after the Malpatragedy, the callous response seemed to be that the porters had volunteered to go on the yatra and that nobody forced them to take up the arduous task,'' says Phakliyat.