⚖️ Mission B · Living Between Rich and Poor
Same city, same country — completely different lives.
📖 Background briefing
Extreme contrasts: India is home to some of Asia's richest people — for example, the Ambani and Adani families — whose personal wealth is counted in tens of billions of dollars. At the same time, a significant share of the population lives below the poverty line, and inequality between India's richest and poorest has been growing.
Dharavi: One of Asia's largest informal settlements sits in the middle of Mumbai, one of India's most expensive cities. Around a million people live in Dharavi, in an area of roughly 2.1 square kilometres — and it's also a real economic engine, home to thousands of small workshops (recycling, leather, textiles, pottery) that together generate significant income every year.
Education — free on paper, unequal in practice: A 2009 law guarantees free and compulsory education for children aged 6–14. Government schools are free, but often under-resourced, with large class sizes. Private schools cost money but often have better facilities — so a family's income can shape a child's entire education. India also has a "reservation" (positive discrimination) system that sets aside places in universities and government jobs for students from disadvantaged castes and groups, to help balance out generations of inequality — a policy that is itself debated.
A fast-growing middle class: Since economic reforms in 1991 opened up India's economy, a large urban middle class has emerged — with access to smartphones, private healthcare, and international travel. This group didn't exist at this scale a generation ago, and it keeps growing.
Skyscraper next to settlement
In cities like Mumbai, luxury apartment towers and informal settlements sometimes stand only streets apart.
A government-school classroom
Free, government-run schools like this one educate the vast majority of Indian children — but often with far fewer resources than private schools.
Studying without a desk
Not every child has a classroom, a desk, or even electricity at home to study by. Some do their homework wherever there's daylight.
Daily-wage work
Millions of Indians earn a living through informal, day-to-day labour — with no fixed salary, contract, or guaranteed income.
Rural India
Around 65% of India's population still lives in rural areas — a very different economic reality from the cities you usually see in the news.
What is Dharavi, and why is it more than just a "poor area"?
Why might a family's income still decide the quality of a child's education, even though school is legally free?
What is India's "reservation" (positive discrimination) system trying to fix?
📸 Build your product: photo story
Your team is creating an interactive photo story for the exhibition, titled "Two Teenagers — Two Indias." Invent two 15-year-olds: one growing up in a low-income family, one in a wealthy family. Write the captions for 4 imagined photos per teenager (8 captions total) showing a normal day: morning, school, free time, evening. Each caption should be 1–2 sentences, written as if it were printed under a real photo.
Example caption to get you started: "6:30 am — Priya walks twenty minutes to the water pump before school. Her family's flat doesn't have running water."
Teenager 1 (low-income family) — 4 photo captions:
Teenager 2 (wealthy family) — 4 photo captions:
If your team wants to actually build the photo story (real or drawn images, printed or digital), write down your plan here: who takes/finds/draws which photo, and how you'll lay it out. You can't submit the finished photo story here — bring it to Phase 4 to show your teacher.
Submit your mission
Enter your name and class, then submit. Bring your finished photo story to Phase 4 for the class exhibition.
Nicely done
Your photo story captions are saved. Head to the Global Challenge Lab once all teams have finished Phase 2.