India, April 2 -- There is stoic resignation in Baban Ram's voice. "I've been sitting at this same spot for the last 32 years. If it's someone else in my place tomorrow, it won't matter to the customers but this is what has helped me raise my five children. At 51, where else am I expected to go?"

At the mouth of the local train platforms at the Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj Terminus (CSMT), the beating heart of Mumbai's suburban railway network, Ram and others who form the Bombay Shoeshine Workers Co-operative Society (BSWCS), are seated on the grey tiles armed with their toolkit of a box, a shoe anvil, shoe polish, cream, shoe brushes and kapda, awls, shoe-laces, soles, and spools of waxed thread.

At their stations by 7 am daily, 22 men ...