But instead of income level, the vulnerability of a person is measured on other poverty indices like if a person has a home, an occupation, if a woman is a widow, of old age or if it is a child-run household.

Noorjehan and Sheikh are among the more than 11,000 most vulnerable identified in their village in east Delhi.

Chitra from the Caring Foundation who has been helping the government in this project said that they also conduct various vocational courses, non-formal education and health camps in the area -- free of charge -- but only for women and children.

Saroj Roshan, for instance, is one of the 10 women doing the six-month beauticians' course. Halfway through the course, she has already bought some basic make-up products and has been using a part of her house as a beauty parlour -- thus making a decent living.

The work of some of the other course students has been so good that big companies are coming forth and placing orders for their products in bulk.

For instance, the Archies Gallery placed three orders of 1,500 paper bags made by students of the handicraft class in the centre.

Talking about the whole scheme Chitra told IANS: 'Not only do we inform people about the various welfare schemes but also identify the potential beneficiaries for every scheme -- be it for widows pension, old age pension, handicapped allowance or the Ladli scheme.

'We then help them fill the form and submit it. Our job doesn't stop there. We track the form until the availability of the scheme's allowance. Earlier these people's forms used to get stuck in the MLA's office but now they don't have to go through the MLA -- we do everything for them.'

Under the project, more than 900,000 houses and 4.5 million people were surveyed in phase one in the entire city and 349,448 out of them were identified as most vulnerable.

Rashmi Singh, director of Mission Convergence, said that while the second phase of the survey is on, the third phase will commence in September. The entire survey and identification process in the capital will be over by the end of this year.

(Azera Rahman can be contacted at azera.p@ians.in)