Enterprising slum women have begun to operate crèches in their own homes for their working neighbours.

Shiela Roy drags her one-and-a-half-year-old son kicking and screaming through the grimy lanes of Madanpur Khadar, a resettled colony of slums on the fringes of South Delhi. Clutching a candy wrapper in one of his tiny fists, the child breaks free with a jerk and runs out to join a raucous group of much older children. Roy sighs and shakes her frail shoulders exasperatedly. "He is known as the colony's youngest goonda but is also the most pampered, " she says, as she plops down on a bed that is already creaking under the pressure of three other kids aged between two months and 11 years.

Roy, who lost a good 18 months of pay during her last pregnancy and delivery period, is in a private daycare centre run by slum women in Khadar.