Life At Ground Zero

Documenting the effects of nuclear testing on Pokhran’s residents

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IN AN IMAGE CAPTURED by the documentary photographer Chinky Shukla, a nine-year-old girl stands in front of a fence and gazes into the camera. Her head looks slightly enlarged and disproportionate to her body. The photograph is from “A Curse in Disguise,” Shukla’s series on people who experienced adverse health conditions following a nuclear test, codenamed Operation Shakti, that was held at Pokhran, Rajasthan, in 1998.

The test involved five nuclear-bomb detonations, and was the second of the two nuclear tests India has conducted at the Indian army’s test range in Pokhran. The first, codenamed Smiling Buddha, was held in 1974. At the time, people from villages surrounding the range were largely unaware of the explosion until it was announced on the radio. But the 1998 test was carried out on a much larger scale, and army personnel instructed villagers to evacuate before the explosion. Despite these precautions, the scale and severity of the test affected villages located between two and five kilometres from the range, including Khetolai, Loharki, Odhaniya and Chacha.