Vani was only nine when she was packed off to Kuala Lumpur as a child-minder for a family she barely knew. She stayed there for five years. She never went to school.

"I was born at home in 1965. My mother did not register for a birth certificate. Now, I don't have a national identity card," she said when met recently in Slim River, a backwater 90-minutes north of KL.

"My father held a red IC (indicating permanent residence status) until he died. My mother died of a serious illness in 1982. Both were drunk all the time."