Delhi's Last Working Elephants

Delhi’s working elephant numbers have tumbled from around 40 in 2001 to only 8 in 2015. Hired out for religious festivals, weddings and other events in India’s capital and kept on the banks of the Yamuna River this is a tradition that can be traced back hundreds of years. But due to the massively changed environment of the city and mounting pressure from animal welfare activists who say the animals are kept in poor conditions and mistreated, the tradition is set to vanish very soon. This story featuring India’s best-known totem, is an apt metaphor for the huge, rapid change being effected in Delhi and across urban India as it rushes to modernise and expand, casting off the old ways to make way for the new. I have documented the unusual working lives of the ‘Hati-Wallahs” for over a year. The elephant handlers and mahouts I photographed, known as 'Hati-Wallahs, ' do not own the elephants, they are paid a small retainer by their owners (who live elsewhere) and supplement this by giving rides to passers by for money and thus eke out a precarious, harsh living in makeshift camps on the banks of the polluted Yamuna River in New Delhi . The owners keep all the money from hiring the animals out for religious festivals, events and weddings and they are also involved in the illegal trade of captive elephants. The living conditions and treatment of elephants kept in cities in North India is extremely harsh, the handlers use the banned iron 'ankush' or bullhook to control the animals through daily beatings, the animals have no proper shelters are forced to walk on burning hot tarmac and stand for hours with their feet chained together.