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epa01205671 A picture dated 09 December 2006 shows migrated workers from western Uttar Pradesh putting firewood inside the brick kiln in the beginning of the session, near Meerut city, India. The labourers usually work for five to seven months beginning around October. They live in poorly-ventilated barrack-like structures near their places of work. The living conditions are quite miserable. The migrant worker involves his whole family because production time is limited and the more bricks they make, the more money they get. In India there has always been a continuous migration of workers, especially from villages to industrial centres, in search of better standards of living and at times due to the sheer need to survive. The Indian brick industry is the second largest in the world after China. Brick kilns and factories are mainly operational in rural and semi urban areas of northern Indian states like Uttar Pradesh. Seventy-five per cent of Indias population lives in the countryside and most migrant workers belong to rural areas with the poorest economic indicators. The children of these workers have no access to education, nor can their parents afford it. Many of them work along with their parents at the kilns, while others, some as young as 8 or 9 look after infant siblings. EPA/HARISH TYAGI