Warning: This story contains images that some readers may find distressing.
Haunting photographs of children with deformed limbs and swollen heads make up one of the exhibits at the ongoing Kochi-Muziris Biennale, an exhibition of contemporary art held annually in the southern Indian state of Kerala.
The photographs, by photojournalist Madhuraj (who uses only one name), chronicle the health impacts believed to be caused by endosulfan – a cheap but highly toxic pesticide – on hundreds of children in Kerala’s Kasargod district in the 1990s and 2000s.
For more than 20 years, beginning in the 1970s, the Plantation Corporation of Kerala sprayed endosulfan on cashew plantations in Kasargod two-to-three times a year. Later, the pesticide was also used on crops like tea, paddy and mango.
In the 1990s, residents reported birth defects in animals and children, including physical and neurological conditions like cerebral palsy, epilepsy and hydrocephalus (fluid build-up in the brain).
Locals also reported rashes, hormonal issues, asthma and cancer – diseases that some environmental organisations and the Kerala government later attributed to endosulfan poisoning, external.
Some scientists in India have challenged the linking of endosulfan, external to these diseases, saying that there is insufficient evidence. But in 2004, Kerala’s Pollution Control Board stopped using the pesticide.
In 2011, external, the Stockholm Convention on Persistent Organic Pollutants implemented a worldwide ban on its production and use. The same year, India’s Supreme Court passed an order banning the use, sale, production and export of endosulfan across the country.
In 2017, the Supreme Court ordered the Kerala government to pay 500,000 rupees ($5,400; £4,000) as compensation to each of the 5,000 victims, but Madhuraj says some of them told him they are yet to receive this amount.
The BBC has reached out to the state’s health department for a response.
Many of the victims were poor labourers and their families belonged to disadvantaged castes and tribal groups with little access to proper nutrition and healthcare.
Madhuraj documented the endosulfan issue in Kasargod for over two decades, visiting the homes of people believed to be impacted by the pesticide several times to understand its effect on their lives.
“I have witnessed first-hand the debilitating impact on victims and how this pesticide has destroyed entire families,” Madhuraj told the BBC.
“In many homes, parents have multiple children with physical and mental disabilities, making it extremely difficult to care for them. I have also seen elderly people struggle to care for their spouses who have developed ailments because of prolonged exposure to the pesticide,” he adds.
Here are some of Madhuraj’s photographs, taken over the past two-and-a-half decades.
Warning: The photos contain graphic imagery, which some readers may find distressing.
