India, Aug. 2 -- Forty-year-old Arvind Shah's family has been rendered more than homeless by the collapse of the building in which they lived.

"It has threatened the one dream I had spent my entire working life trying to protect - that my children should never have to live the life I did," said Shah. An orphan since birth, Shah came to Mumbai from Bihar at the age of 17 and has worked as a power loom worker ever since.

Shah, who lived in the Kohinoor Building for nearly 11 years, said a significant part of his home had collapsed. He said that all the years of hard labour taught him one lesson - the cycle of poverty can only be broken through education. But Friday's tragedy has thrown his children's education into uncertainty.

His three...