There’s a saying that you can never go hungry in the city of Kolkata, even if all you possess are just a few coins. Much before West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee launched the ‘Maa Canteen’ that serves meals worth Rs. 5, the city has been satiating the hunger of thousands of people for over decades.

The Pice hotels, situated across the city and beyond, offer cheap and comforting meals to people from all walks of life — be it IT professionals or migrant workers. A source of affordable and homely nourishment, today only a few of these establishments survive amid the barrage of fast-food centres mushrooming in every nook and corner of Kolkata.

The Right ‘Pice’

Derived straight from the word, ‘paisa’, which is considered the lowest denomination in Indian currency, the Pice hotels originated during the British Raj in the 1900s, across the then commercial capital of Calcutta. Back then, ‘Pice’ was a monetary unit of British India equivalent to one quarter of an anna.

Unpretentious in their decor, these eateries provided simple, wholesome meals for a few paisas to satiate the hunger of thousands of migrants moving to the city in search of a livelihood. A concept that operated to complement the burgeoning ‘mess’ or paying guest accommodations, a majority of these migrants would be bachelor men from lower-middle class and middle-class families, who did not know how to cook and would miss homely meals.

Pice hotels not only provided them sustenance but also a space to belong which was symbolic of a home away from home.

But beyond the goal of catering to homesick bachelors, the service at these establishments was also unique. Although the food prepared was strictly traditional with comforting items like—maach bhaja (fried fish), maacher jhol (fish curry), kumro phool bhaja (pumpkin flower fritters), alu posto (potato with poppy seeds), etc—their method of service was slightly different from the norm, and environmentally sustainable much before it became a buzzword.

For instance, Pice hotels would serve the food on banana leaves and the customers would be seated on mats on the floor, instead of plastic furniture, as seen in numerous affordable eateries across the city. There was no concept of a menu card, instead the daily changing menu would be handwritten on a blackboard, and memorised by the servers. Another unique feature of the Pice hotels was to price every single item separately. To ensure zero wastage and low overhead costs, customers would have to individually pay for everything they consumed, even the banana leaf and a small sliver of lemon.

Here are few iconic Pice hotels that you must visit on your next trip to Kolkata:

Hotel Sidheshwari Ashram:

Tucked away in an alley behind the city’s iconic Sir Stuart Hogg Market (New Market), stands Sidheshwari Ashram, which has been serving loyal patrons for the past 93 years. Established in 1928, by Khudiram Sarkar this eatery is famous for its special Kobiraji Jhol, which is basically a healthy fish curry preparation with raw banana, potato, papaya and very little oil. While fish is a constant in their menu, other items like mocha (banana blossom) and kancha amer chutney (raw mango chutney) are also popular.

Beyond the food, the interiors of Sidheshwari Ashram are also slightly more polished than other Pice hotels. The current owners of this establishment, Debjani and Rita Sen, have made a few changes to the interiors by adding wooden furniture and air conditioners in an effort to attract more international tourists.

Tarun Niketan Hotel:

One of the oldest Pice hotels in the city, Tarun Niketan Hotel was established in 1915 by Eshan Chandra Deb. Located near Lake market, inside a narrow lane, this establishment is known for its meat and fish dishes, especially hansher dim (duck egg) curry and mutton curry. Most of its food is prepared in a traditional way without any onion or garlic, baring the non-vegetarian items.

Swadhin Bharat Hindu Hotel:

Located in a student hub in College Street, near the Presidency College, this establishment was set up in 1927 by Man Gobindo Ponda. One of the things that make this Bengali eatery stand out from the rest is its impressive variety of vegetarian dishes. Showcasing a whooping 28 types of vegetarian dishes, Swadhin Bharat Hindu Hotel is the answer to every vegetarian tourist’s complaint that Kolkata has no good vegetarian food.

But, that doesn’t mean, meat and fish eating patrons are left unsatisfied here. This eatery also boasts of fish curries made with rare freshwater fishes like magur maach, koi maach, etc. One should also try the chitol macher muitha (fish balls cooked in spicy tomato onion gravy) and macher dimer bora (fish egg pakoras).

Jagannath Ashram Hotel:

Situated just beside the famed Ghosh Cabin of College Street, Jagannath Ashram Hotel also was a hub for young migrant students, academicians and workers looking for homely food. Established in 1952 by Gobordhan Palui, this eatery has changed a lot in terms of the interiors but prides itself on its untouched authentic menu. From renowned author Mahashweta Devi to veteran singer Manna Dey, this restaurant has served many prominent intellectuals back in the day, and continues to do so till date. When visiting College Street, try their watery mutton curry with rice for lunch and top it off with roshogollas from Ghosh Cabin.

Parbati Hotel:

This Pice hotel is a fish lover’s paradise with over 10 fish items to choose from every single day. Located near Jadu Babur bazaar in Bhowanipur, this eatery was established in 1960. While the original owner’s name is still unknown , it is now run by Souvik Daso who takes pride in Parbati Hotel’s exhaustive menu of fish curries and bhajas. One of the most affordable even among all Pice hotels, come to this restaurant for its simple yet delicious serving of mustard hilsa curry.

Today, against the backdrop of commercialisation, many Pice hotels are struggling to survive. In most of the places, the bamboo floor mats have been replaced with tables and chairs but the tradition of serving on banana leaves and a handwritten menu affordable for all, continues.

For them, it is not about just swimming against the current but keeping nostalgia alive through pure ingredients and authentic flavours that don’t require fancy decor or high price tags. This is because at Pice hotels you are guaranteed a full belly, but never a light pocket.

(Edited by Yoshita Rao)

Once known as a safe haven for Maoists, the Ajodhya hills in West Bengal’s Purulia district has now become a tourist hotspot, all thanks to the efforts of one man — Chitta Dey.

Using the ancient art of ‘in-situ’ rock carving, he transformed the face of the scenic hills situated between Balamrampur and Srirampur village, and in the process generated employment for nearly 25 tribal youth. 

He engraved birds and animals on the gigantic rocks, as tall as 800 feet. Impressed with the 63-year-old talented artist, the government of West Bengal extended financial support for his process and also to preserve the rocks. 

“Stealing and illegal smuggling of ancient rocks with carvings is a common practice in India. By illustrating art on Ajodhya hills, we have ensured that the precious hill will not be damaged by anyone. The stone carvings have now become a part of our heritage just like the Elephanta or Ajanta Ellora caves,” Chitta tells The Better India.

The dextrous artist, who was once labelled as ‘crazy’ for saying the rock was his ‘canvas’, was also turned away by the government and locals who failed to fathom why an artist like him was interested in ‘wasting’ his skills here. 

Hill Hunting 

Born and raised in a lower middle class family of Kolkata with eight siblings, Chitta was never encouraged to pursue his artistic abilities though he was locally quite popular for his work. His father passed away in 1975 and this further pushed him away from it.

He took up a job in theatres to design sets and support his family while saving enough to do a diploma course from Government Art College in Kolkata. 

Here, he would discover the technique of in-situ carving and learn India’s prosperous heritage in stone sculpting.

“Stone carvings are usually associated with a process in which stones are quarried and sculpted somewhere else. This practice is common and uncomplicated. But if you glance around the globe, you will find remarkable sites where sculpting was done on site. These include China’s Giant Buddha, Crazy Horse Memorial in South Dakota, Naqsh-e-Rustam in Persepolis and Santoni in Sicily. Closer home we have Ajanta and Badami Cave temples. As per my knowledge, the last stone sculpting in India was done in the 11th century. I wanted to revive this artform and pass down the skills to the younger generation,” says Chitta. 

Before embarking on his mission, Chitta worked in the local art scene and established himself. 

The triggering point came in 1991 during an art show where he exhibited a metal scripture of a bird with wings as large as 22 feet tall. He was forced to dismantle the piece and assemble it again as it couldn’t pass through the doors of the Academy of Fine Arts.

When he was asked to reduce the size of his pieces at upcoming exhibitions, he realised he needed a larger canvas.

In the same year, he began the hunt for a suitable hill and visited multiple sites, from the Western ghats of Maharashtra to the metamorphosed rock hill terrain of Tamil Nadu.

He would observe the shape and size of the hills and imagine the drawings of birds and animals on them. He also studied and tested the rocks. Ajoydhya hills were the closest in terms of distance and also the most suitable for his next masterpiece.

It took him nearly 2-3 years and innumerable visits to various departments of the government offices to get the permits. In 1996, the State Government under then-Chief Minister Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee allotted him an 800-foot hill in the Mathar Pahar region and granted him Rs 2 lakhs for his work.

Stone Conservation Through Art 

Chitta adopted a two-pronged strategy to sensitise the locals and increase the tourism in the region. 

“The tribals have been living here for centuries and some families are still forest-dependent. Not involving them would be unfair. I taught stone carving and sculpting to 30 local youth over a period of three years. They were trained in handling hammers and chisel, rock climbing, and rappelling. I spent hours teaching designs, motifs, floral patterns on paper,” says Chitta. 

The villagers labelled him as a ‘mad person up to something with the hill’. “Yet he would eat with us and sleep with us on the floor,” Paresh Mahato, one of the trainees, told Mint. 

Chitta was impressed with the students’ patience and dedication and that motivated him to stay on this long and arduous journey of several years. 

To attract the tourists, Chitta focussed on a nature-themed series called Pakhi Pahar (bird hill) in which he would draw over a hundred species of birds.

By 1999, he was ready with the drawings but the work began only in 2008 when he was granted more funds by the Central government’s Planning Commission.

While the smallest wingspan is about 55 feet, the biggest is spread across 120 feet of rock.

Chitta says one figurine can take anywhere between six months to a year, depending on its size and the weather conditions. Extreme heat and monsoons are a strict no. 

“Stone carving requires immense amounts of stamina, strength and patience. On some days, we have to be okay if we just finish a tiny portion of the eye. It may look as if we are just sitting and doing the work but to think of it we are hanging several feet high in our harnesses in one position. We seldom take breaks. But we stop the work during unfavourable weather, otherwise, it can get quite dangerous,” he adds. 

The team spends at least a month visualising the bird on the hill from all sides before putting it on paper. 

“We use three enamel painting colours — white, blue and yellow, throughout the process. Yellow is to draw a model figure inside, which is the blue line from where we start cutting. White forms the basis of the structure. In the end, we wipe all the colours except white which takes the form of the figure,” explains Chitta. 

Chitta and his team are presently working on their second project to make endangered animals like pangolin, turtles and spotted deers along with frogs, peacocks and squirrels. They are also using boulders and small rocks to showcase the local fauna. 

Seeing the breathtaking rock art, the local government took several initiatives to beautify the hills like planting trees, making roads for proper connectivity and patrolling the area. 

The tourism has increased two-fold, Chitta claims and says, “With more and more tourists flocking here, the presence of non-state actors has decreased. Plus, the locals are able to earn more because of the tourism boom. I am ecstatic to see that Pakhar Pahar is listed as a must-visit tourist spot on private and government tourism websites,” he says. 

In their next project, the team hopes to recreate an underwater ecosystem depicting the lives of corals and fishes. However, he is worried about the funds. While the government has always supported his work, Chitta says they need more for execution. 

“Financial help can guarantee that my team will pass on their skills to the next generation, who will continue this art for years to come. This is an important art form and we must do everything we can to preserve it,” he signs off. 

(Edited by Yoshita Rao)

Studying in India’s premier institute, IIT-Kanpur still feels like a dream to Umashankar Mondal, a resident of West Bengal’s Tantipara village. Growing up in a weaver’s family, education was never a priority, and he was predestined to join his family.

But he was different, not just from his family but also from other children in the village. Going to school and scoring distinction was his gateway to success.

All he needed was a platform and professional career guidance, which he found in Sayambharataa Rural Skill Development Foundation (SRSDF).

“I was in Class 9 when Gargi (Dey) ma’am, an IIT professor, introduced me to the institute that taught our nation’s brightest minds. I wanted to be a part of that. With her guidance, support and academic teachings, I completed my chemistry honours from Jadavpur University. The foundation believed in me and funded my education. This guidance continued when I gave entrance for MSc for IIT and I cracked it in 2020,” Umashankar tells The Better India.

Umashankar’s journey has inspired several children in the village while giving hope to parents who cannot afford education. His own younger brother has joined the foundation to follow a similar path.

“I would’ve never got out of my village had it not been for the SRSDF. They changed my life and showed me our circumstances can be changed with proper support,” adds the IITian.

Umashankar is one of the many children from the village whose life has changed for the better by the foundation, which was started by a couple of friends in 2014.

Not a Charity

Subrata Bose co-founded SRSDF with his friends Sharbari Bhattacharya, Debjani Mitra andPradyut Bhattacharya. Sandip Ghosh, Sushmita Bose and Kalpana Dutta joined in as active members.

The software engineer from Kolkata, had been a couple of years into philanthropic work when he visited Tantipara village as part of a social welfare project.

Here, he met Madhusudan Ghosh, a daily wager who asked Subrata to donate some money for his son, Bapan. The desperate father even showed his topper son’s report card.

But Subrata came up with an idea of establishing a system where children from marginal families would be guided by experts and supported financially with the condition that they would repay society. This could either be by paying back the money, sponsoring a destitute child or offering teaching services to the juniors.

Presently, 15 students are being funded by ex-students.

“Charity may not always be helpful and not everyone realises its value. We gave some money to Madhusudan and realised there must be several children willing to go to school. When we did an informal survey, we found that 45% of students, especially girls, in the village dropout after Class 8. The first generational learners accept that they have to work as farm labourers and girls assume marriage is the finish line. We wanted to change this,” Subrata says.

The beauty of SRSDF is that anyone can join the core committee by involving themselves in the planning and execution.

So far, close to 2,000 students across 12 villages have studied under the foundation. It has three learning centres and one resource centre where students are tutored. The foundation has hired 11 teachers and eight senior students who act as mentors.

Coping with the Challenges

The core committee members met with several problems in the initial period. It took a lot of time and effort to build trust and convince parents to send children to the centres instead of taking them for work.

Additionally, most of the members live in Kolkata so commuting was another challenge. They hired villagers to run the resource centres and involved local teachers as well to sustain the project.

“We identified subjects that the students needed the most help with and began the classes with 85 students of Class 8, 9 and 10. The goal was to ensure they completed their schooling. The students, who once couldn’t relate to science, maths and english, were now scoring high marks. For the first time they realised these subjects had real life applications. As the word spread, more students joined and we opened the centres for students below Class 8,” says Subrata.

A year later or so, the organisation began the mentoring programme and gave a monthly stipend of Rs 500 to senior students. These students play, read and tutor the young ones.

The organisation also started collaborating with other local NGOs to formulate policies, provide skill and vocational training and engage experts as guest lecturers.

The centre has an audio-visual room to impart digital learnings. This room is also used to conduct extracurriculars like drama, science workshops and art and craft classes.

“The foundation gives an all-around development to students, which helps in confidence boosting, improves our overall knowledge and enhances our analytical thinking. This is enough for any child to believe they have a bright future,” adds Umashankar.

In their 7-year-long stint, the foundation has observed that not all students may be able to reach Umashankar’s level i.e. higher education. They are provided vocational training in stitching, mechanics, making handicrafts, etc.

Tara Ghosh, a nurse, is one of them. Her father, a daily wage labourer, who sold his cattle to fund Tara’s education but she was finding it difficult to meet the living expenses in Kolkata. She reached out to SRSDF for financial aid three years ago.

“We were surprised but happy to know that the father gave importance to his child’s education. She is extremely hard working and now is employed at a government hospital earning more than Rs 30,000. We also helped her younger brother who will begin his M-Tech in IISC in Shibpur,” adds Subrata.

Tara, who once faced a bleak future and had tremendous self-doubt, has today built a permanent house for her father.

You can reach SRSDF here.

(Edited by Yoshita Rao)

Picking up the colourful silken thread with a tiny needle and deftly pricking the finest hand woven Pashmina shawl stretched across the embroidery, wooden frame to make an intrinsic motif, is what Pia Chatterjee, Rupsana Khatoon, Rita Mondol, Mou Jana, Falguni Maity, Mita Mondol, and 100 other women, are doing. They are happily chatting but completely focused on embroidering a canvass of art.

Yes, their work in Petit point and Gara embroidery motifs on sarees, shawls or dupattas are no less than a work of art. Their work is sure to receive compliments, if exhibited along with the works of legendary artists like Raja Ravi Varma, Vincent Van Gogh, Michelangelo or any other great artists of the world.

The women from humble backgrounds—few from tribal land, few others from places with limited opportunities—haven’t finished their high school education. The only language they speak is a dialect of Bengali as they all reside in the underdeveloped hamlets around Midnapore, Hooghly, Bankura of West Bengal. But they all love watching Hindi films, especially films of Salman Khan, Akshay Kumar without understanding Hindi.

“This is my eighth year. I trained here for six months and now love making different flowers, leaves, birds with a needle and colourful resham (silk) thread,” says 26-year-old Pia.

“I have been working here for 12 years now and we have all become a family. We work, eat, share our problems, talk about films and enjoy our time here along with the work,” adds 34-year-old Rupsana.

Mother of two daughters, the 42-year-old Mita explains that she loves to see photographs of rich women in far off places dressed in their creations. For 15 years she has been working in this place and says, “We feel proud when we see women dressed in our work. The embroidery is so intricate and beautiful that when people appreciate our work, we are happy.”

They are all part of Prastuti Designs, an over-30-year-old design organisation. None of the products produced on completely handwoven silks, wool fabric are sold for anything less Rs 15,000 per piece and the highest price can go into lakhs.

“My mother, Deepa Gupta, had started working with around 600 women in Kantha embroidery style. But my sister Tanvi and I, wanted to do something different and so started the Gara and Petit point in our units,” explains 45-year-old Anshul Gupta, the man behind the revised Prastuti Designs, which so far has worked with more than 1,200 women over the last two decades.

But how did Gara and Petit point, which are non-Indian embroidery styles, get established in this region?

Design Inspirations From Abroad

Gara is known as the Parsi sari worn during special occasions like weddings or festivals. Gara sari to a Parsi bride is like the Benarasi brocade sari to a North Indian bride, a Kanchipuram sari to a South Indian bride or a Paithani sari to a bride from Maharashtra. Gara embroidery was introduced in India by a Parsi businessman travelling to China on trade. One of them brought a fabric that had this embroidery which depicted the flora and fauna so beautifully that it almost appeared as though the flowers were real and the new Parsi women settlers who wanted to have an identity in India decided to adopt it as part of their wedding trousseau.

Petit point embroidery, famous as the embroidery of France, was popular in the 17th and early 18th century. It was brought to India by European settlers and missionaries. The stitches are so small that nearly 1,000 stitches are stitched in one square inch area. Each stitch can be made with different coloured thread, making the piece unbelievably attractive. The problem with both Gara and Petit point is that they are very difficult to master and very time consuming to make.

It takes nearly 1,500 to 5,000 hours to make a sari and the reason why 10 to 12 women are assigned to work together on a sari so that it can be completed on time. No machine can replicate this embroidery and this increases the cost of the end product.

Retrieving Lost Embroidery

At any given point there are more than 350 women working in three units of Prastuti spread in three different areas in the hinterland of West Bengal. Added to this are more than 300 people indirectly involved by undertaking other jobs for Prastuti.

Deepa Gupta started Prastuti with only women who make beautiful products from Kantha style embroidery in the 1990s. It became famous for authentic Kantha products. So, Anshul and Tanvi were exposed to Kantha styles from the beginning.

Around the turn of this century, Anshul was pursuing his chartered accountant degree (CA) but one mark less to succeed in the final exams changed his future. In fact, growing up in the atmosphere of fabric, threads, designs and embroidery he was never too fond of pursuing a career as a CA.

“That was also the time when suddenly in the world of embroidery, people started talking about Gara and Petit point. Like all other handmade items even these two styles had almost vanished. In Mumbai I met one Ms Aagha and knowing my interest in embroidery, she suggested introducing these styles in our units,” recalls Anshul.

To introduce these two styles which were completely alien in his land was daunting. Luckily, he met two embroiderers Mukhtarbhai and Gulambhai—both expert embroiderers of these styles—wanting to return to their homes in Bengal from Uttar Pradesh where they had trained and worked as master embroiderers. They agreed to train the women in these styles.

Of course there was a lot of opposition to learn something new that required hard work, as these women knew Kantha from their childhood and were worried about employment opportunities. But they were promised sure employment in good working conditions.

Today, every trainee is paid a monthly stipend of Rs 500 for six months. After training, the successful trainees are absorbed in the unit at a wage of Rs 300 a day of eight hours, for 360 days in a year.

Though anyone can take leave at any time, the units function throughout the year except during the Durga Puja — a big festival in West Bengal. Plus Rs 3,000 interest free loan is given to buy bicycles for women to travel from their homes to the units. Majority of these women cycle to their workplace as it saves them time and money from using erratic public transport. So, depending on the days they put in, they earn anywhere between Rs 2,500 to Rs 7,500 per month. It also provides them with safety from child marriages and harassment at home.

Their earning gives them strength.

Falguni Maity, 32, who has been with Prastuti for 12 years now says, “I love to cycle to my workplace. Even during the monsoon, I either wait till it stops raining or carry change of clothes which I change in our unit’s restroom after I reach here. Cycling saves me the hassle of waiting for public transport.”

That’s another reason why women love to work at Prastuti. Unlike many other such units in the country, Prastuti maintains clean and good restrooms for their workers. Added to this are the air-conditioners installed in two units, which make it comfortable to work in summer.

“We also serve free lunches of rice and egg curry or rice and fish curry with some torkari (vegetables),” explains 51-year-old Biplab Mazumdar, who has been working as a supervisor in one of the units for more than two decades. Even his mother and four sisters worked as embroiderers here.

With high net worth clients, who can afford these heirloom products, Anshul Gupta wants to branch out slowly to begin other styles of hand embroidery prevalent across the country.

He hopes this will generate more employment for the women of the hinterland of West Bengal, and that many of the vanishing hand embroidery styles will get a new lease of life.

(Edited by Yoshita Rao)

The undulating landmass of Jhargram in West Bengal provided its Adivasi inhabitants with the opportunity to grow only one crop i.e. paddy, during the monsoons. For the rest of the year, the locals derive sustenance and nourishment from the forests by cutting and collecting wood, foraging for food, hunting animals, making ropes or doing menial jobs. It has been so for generations but thanks to the intervention of 31-year-old ‘water champion’ Lilabati Mahata, an Adivasi. Due to her efforts, scores of households now grow seasonal vegetables to usher in better times.

An integral part of the Chota Nagpur Plateau, Jhargram became West Bengal’s 22nd district in 2017, having split from Paschim Medinipur and has a particularly severe drought situation. A mere 3 per cent of the population here are urbanites while the rest is rural.

Known as lal-matir desh with its rusty red laterite soil, the sparsely populated Adivasi hamlets have scarce water resources. Though the region receives about 1,400 mm of rainfall between June and September, due to lack of water conservation and irrigation management, the rainwater flows from upland to downstream joining the river resulting in severe water stress and frequent crop failure.

In this water-scarce region, Lilabati, an agricultural labourer of Dhobakhuria village in Binpur 2 block, mobilised hundreds of village women to erect and lay water conservation structures. This has led to the Adivasis taking to growing vegetables, both for consumption and sale. Thanks to her exemplary work the UNDP (United Nations Development Project) in its publication, “A compendium of 41 Women Stewards” has identified Lilabati as a ‘water champion’.

Water-Smart Approach

Married at the age of 16, Lilabati had to abandon her studies after completing her first year in college to take care of her two daughters. The family became farm labourers when her in-laws refused to support them. “We had to find a house of our own. There was no financial security and we led a hand to mouth existence,” she recollects.

In 2011 Lilabati started a self-help savings group (SHG) with women of her neighbourhood and over the next few years it accumulated decent savings. She says, “My husband moved to Tatanagar, having taken up a job and soon started sending part of his salary. I availed of a loan from the SHG in 2016 and leased three bighas in order to grow vegetables. In the four-month period, I earned around Rs 1,20,000. This was enough to make the village folks realise that one could earn from growing one’s food, even if they didn’t own the piece of land.”

Soon womenfolk flocked her leased land in large numbers to learn the techniques she had used and get on-hand experience. Interestingly, even men started seeking her advice. As her popularity grew she helped mobilise the womenfolk to demand the right to work from the Panchayat under the MGNREGA (Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act), which entitles them to 100 days of paid labour in order to build water structures of their choice.

Having earned handsomely from growing vegetables, Lilbati has invested in a Scooty that she rides to reach out to village folks who seek her assistance on crop selection, growing them and water conservation. “We have a WhatsApp Group too. Members address me as ‘didi’, and insist that I visit them on a daily basis, which is not possible. But I am in touch with them regularly to address their queries.”

It was in 2014 that PRADAN (Professional Assistance for Development Action), a non-government, non-profit organisation that works across seven of the poorest states in the country, engaged Lilabati to promote new farming practices amongst the adivasi farmers that were less water-intensive. “I was chosen because I was the most educated in the village. I learnt how to prepare a field before sowing, maintaining soil moisture using mulch, nourishing the soil with vermicompost and most importantly to preserve the groundwater,” elaborates Lilabati.

Since the water levels in her village were declining, the villagers felt the need to build a pond that would store water and allow it to gradually replenish the groundwater table. However, the Panchayat refused to fund the village pond. But the determination of the 500-strong womenfolk and their persistence of two years made the Panchayat ultimately yield and the womenfolk got their pond and adequate compensation for their work too.

This show of courage and endurance motivated the neighbouring villages too, who demanded their right to work from their respective Panchayats.

Lilabati has successfully mobilised her community members to bring rigorous engagement on issues such as soil and moisture conservation and regeneration of natural resources, resource mapping, patch demarcation and problem identification. Through her engagement with the community, she has succeeded in adopting efficient water use in agriculture, which has helped in enhancing practices of agriculture along with better production and strengthening their economic conditions.

So far 1,250 households, spread across 85 villages, having acquired knowledge of various natural resources management, have adopted water conservation methods.

“In the last six years, we have built over 1,000 staggered trenches, contour bunds, filtration pits, seepage tanks, etc., which helps irrigate agriculture plots,” Lilabati says.

The village folk now grow watermelon, brinjal, tomato, chilli, etc., which ensures a decent livelihood. Earlier, they had to take their produce to a market 30km away. Today, traders visit the adivasi villages to collect their produce.

On a concluding note, Lilabati says, “I wish to establish women’s identities as farmers in society through natural resource management.”

(Edited by Yoshita Rao)

Born to a rural medical practitioner and an ASHA (Accredited Social Health Activist) worker, Dr Golam Ahmed Kibria was privy to the pain and ordeal that weaker economic sections go through to access healthcare facilities. Since his childhood, he had watched his parents dedicate all their services to bridge this gap.

Inspired by his parents’ drive to reduce the suffering of the poor, he decided that he, too, would pursue medicine. He completed his MBBS degree from Burdwan Medical College in 2016 and joined the university as an intern in 2021. However, just as he had begun his medical practice, the second wave of the pandemic swept over the country.

In a conversation with The Better India, he recalls, “The cases increased and soon a lockdown was imposed, putting restrictions on travel and movement. This meant that those living in far off areas could not access healthcare facilities with ease. There were no buses or trains for people from remote parts of West Bengal to reach the hospital. At times, there were emergency cases that needed to be attended,” he says.

So Dr Golam decided to reach the needy and provide necessary treatment at their doorstep. “I started organising weekend camps in the villages, outside of my weekly work hours,” he says.

Today, his efforts have benefitted thousands — from identifying babies with congenital and neurological disorders to diagnosing an elderly woman who was unable to move due to severe orthopaedic disease, he has touched many lives for the better.

A role model for fraternity

Explaining his approach, Dr Golam says, “I reached the villages to organise free camps to screen patients with health complaints. Some patients were treated on the spot, while others with severe medical conditions were referred to the hospital. An ambulance would be called to attend to the patients and ferry them to the hospital.”

Dr Golam says all the services were free as the hospital belongs to the government.

Recognising his efforts, other doctors began joining his cause. Today, 160 members have organised 25 medical camps across villages and helped over 5,000 people, Dr Golam says.

“We established an NGO, Prayas, to ensure that the work continued even after the lockdown restrictions were lifted. Donations help meet medical expenses while the treatment is offered for free by the doctors,” he adds.

These services have also reduced the economic burden on patients. “Apart from the transport costs, the poor spend at least Rs 500 for consultation and medication. Our camps save that money,” he says.

Sharing his own example, Dr Golam says, “My parents collectively earned Rs 18,000 a month, and they struggled to meet my education expenses. I know the value of small savings. We as doctors have a sufficient salary, and we can afford to treat a few poor for free.”

However, not everyone saw his efforts in a positive light. “We faced resistance in many villages. Some village heads questioned our intentions, while others thought we were organising these camps for political gains. Some villagers thought free medical camps were our move to charge patients in the long run,” he explains.

Dr Golam hopes that his initiative encourages many others in his fraternity. “Health is a basic requirement for survival, like food and shelter. If doctors start reaching locals in their residential area to offer free treatment, hundreds can benefit from the same,” he concludes.

Edited by Divya Sethu

My mother strongly believes that the best things in life come simple — with a pinch of salt and a drizzle of lemon juice. While the philosophical undertones of this notion only became clear to me as an adult, it is also amazing how it seamlessly translates into the food she cooks — heavily influenced by eastern India’s overlapping culinary textures, it is the epitome of gastronomic complexity packed inside a rather simple platter. One such wonder that she and many mothers of the region lovingly create, is the Bengali panta bhat, a fermented rice dish.

Also known as poita bhat in Assam, geel bhat in Bihar and pakhala in Odisha, this simple yet flavoursome dish is a centuries-old recipe of fermented watery rice, served with a variety of sides like spiced mashed potatoes (aloo sheddo), onion or lentil fritters, smoked eggplant (begun pora), deep-fried fish, curd or just a dollop of kasundi, a paste made using fermented mustard seeds.

In Assam, poita bhat is consumed during the Bohag Bihu festivities in small portions after whisking it with a hand fan, as a symbol of welcoming the summer season. Almost every region in India, including parts of South India where it is popular as pazhaya sadham (also known as pazhaya soru) and chaddannam (Andhra Pradesh and Telangana), seems to have a variation of this dish, which is the ultimate cooling probiotic packed with various micro-nutrients including Vitamin B12.

Whatever the name, the simple combination of leftover rice, water, salt and lemon (preferably gondhoraj lebu) juice is not just breathtaking taste-wise but is also extremely healthy, and a rather useful tool to beat the scorching heat during the summers. Many elders, including my grandmother would often add, that consuming this in the morning would help in weight-control and enhance bone strength.

Leftover Rice on Water, a Medical Miracle?

Traditionally fermented for almost 12 hours overnight, this easy-to-prepare rice concoction continues to be served as a quick morning breakfast in various households, especially the ones run by people whose livelihood depends on physical labour. It not only fills the belly on a budget, but also provides the much-needed nutrition for the strenuous job.

It is for these reasons that panta bhat is considered by many to be a poor man’s breakfast. However, it is entirely possible that they did not know about its proven nutritional benefits.

In an interview with The Telegraph, Madhumita Barooah, an Associate Professor in the Assam Agricultural University, explained the nutritional value of fermented rice over the usual cooked rice.

“About 100 gm of cooked rice has only 3.4 mg of iron, while for the same quantity of rice fermented for 12 hours, the iron content went up to 73.91 mg. Likewise, sodium, which was 475 mg came down to 303 mg, potassium went up to 839 mg and calcium went up from 21 mg per 100gm of cooked rice to 850 mg, after 12 hours of fermentation of the same quantity of rice,” she explained.

Barooah adds that despite rice being an important dietary staple for a majority in the country, it is not a good source of metabolic micro-nutrients, due to the presence of anti-nutritional factors such as phytic acid, which however gets considerably reduced through the process of fermentation.

“Cereal grains such as rice also contain oligosaccharides that are not easily digestible because of absence of an enzyme in the human intestinal mucosa. Fermentation allows for breakdown of this and easy digestion” she adds.

And because of this quality, in several households of India, this rice concoction is also served to the sick especially those suffering from constipation or fever, for speedy recovery. Rich in vitamin B12, Vitamin B and potassium, it is famed to prevent fatigue, cure ulcer and even reduce blood pressure.

Although usually made out of parboiled rice, another report by the Deccan Chronicle adds that if brown rice is fermented and consumed in a similar manner, the increase in magnesium and selenium levels helps strengthen bones and to a certain degree, even prevent the onset of diseases like arthritis and cancer.

From a “Poor-Man’s Breakfast” to a Fine-Dine Experience

Today, food enthusiasts, chefs and nutritionists have not only introduced several ways of making the humble panta bhat, but have also freed it from the shackles of social status.

Served as part of a fine-dine experience in several posh restaurants, food festivals and featured by food bloggers, panta bhat is now a super food, sought out by foodies both in India and abroad.

For instance, in West Bengal, both during the Bengali New Year, or otherwise, several restaurants are serving items like, ‘panta platter’, panta thali’ and ‘panta with fried fish’, at competitive prices owing to its rising popularity.

Even in Kerala, a zero-waste sustainable restaurant, Pappadavada, Kochi is now serving fermented rice known as pazhankanji in Malayalam, as a gourmet dish, with side of tapioca and coconut chutney, small onions, pickle, curd and green chillies. According to restauranteur, Minu Pauline, the sale of pazhankanji is heightened both by its rehydrating and health benefits as well as a nostalgia factor.

But, beyond this razzmatazz and under all the fancy garnishing, to the initiated, panta bhat is and forever will be a humble whiff of nostalgia filled with sweet and tangy memories at every single ‘gorash’ (morsel).

Featured image source

(Edited by Gayatri Mishra)

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Born in 1944, in Muransole, a village located in the remote area of West Midnapore district, Gurucharan Murumu joined the Indian Police Service (IPS) in 1972, and in doing so, became the first ever Santal to have served in the Union Civil Service.

“Coming from such a place where Adivasis continue to be inhabitants of a republic of hunger, still stalked by malnutrition, poverty and underdevelopment, Gurucharan Murmu’s achievement remains an admirable feat,” says Maroona Murmu, an Associate Professor in the Department of History at Jadavpur University, Kolkata, and his daughter, speaking to The Better India.

Overcoming incredible odds, the former IPS officer served with distinction, honesty and integrity, which unfortunately also meant often clashing with vested political interests during the 34-year-long reign of the Left Front government.

This is his remarkable life story.

True Grit

On 25 November 1949, Dr. BR Ambedkar had delivered a stirring address to the Constituent Assembly, talking about the immense challenges before the young republic.

“On the 26th of January 1950, we are going to enter into a life of contradictions. In politics we will have equality and in social and economic life we will have inequality. In politics we will be recognising the principle of one man one vote and one vote one value. In our social and economic life, we shall, by reason of our social and economic structure, continue to deny the principle of one man one value,” he said.

Growing up, Gurucharan would encounter constant denials by the social and economic establishment on account of his identity as an Adivasi. His father passed away before he even turned three, but his elder brother, Manik Chand Murmu, stepped up to earn for the family and ensure that he finished primary and secondary school at the Gandapal Primary School and Belpahari SC High School respectively.

By the time 1962 came around, he enrolled for his pre-university course at the Scottish Church College in present-day Kolkata. Despite his obvious intelligence, he was often seen as a misfit by both his teachers and fellow classmates.

In fact, his teachers would often advise him to return to his village and take up occupations ‘better suited’ for people from his community like fishing or agriculture. Fortunately, upon seeing his proficiency in Sanskrit, a language often associated with intellectual ability and high culture, a few encouraged him to not pay heed to those remarks, and instead pursue higher education.

But he knew that living in a society deeply entrenched in caste inequalities as a reserved category student, he would never be able to earn a respectable career teaching Sanskrit.

So, he studied history, and finished his Bachelors and Master’s degree in Modern History from the University of Calcutta.

He would go on to clear the notoriously difficult UPSC exams, and join the IPS in 1972. His career began as an Assistant Superintendent of Police of Lalbagh in Murshidabad district two years later in 1974 before becoming a Sub-Divisional Police Officer there.

The IPS Officer Who Paid a Price for Honesty

When the Left Front government took office in 1977, Gurucharan was serving as Additional Superintendent of Police in Nadia district. However, he came into contact with a government that accelerated the politicisation of the police force.

“In 1979, [Chief Minister] Jyoti Basu had a brainwave: inject politics into a disciplined force by forming the Calcutta Police Association. It also paved the way for the formation of non-gazetted unions in the district police lines. With most promotions and postings defined by political equations, the personnel in uniform became an extension of the party. Handpicked officers were busy serving the interests of the government and the party, leaving corrupt and inept officers to call the shots in law and order management,” notes this scathing Telegraph assessment.

For the likes of Gurucharan, who was only concerned with the honest performance of his duties in upholding the rule of law, there was bound to be a falling out with the ruling government. From challenging the violence unleashed by the party’s cadre, political and bureaucratic corruption to standing his ground against unfair treatment meted out to him, his uncompromising integrity often came in the way of career progression.

“Like most parties in power, the tendency is to shield people who are close to the party or encourage corruption of various sorts that would benefit the party in power. My father did whatever he thought was beneficial for the people whom he served. He took up the job to serve the people of this country to the best of his ability and remained undeterred in this mission. Nothing could enfeeble his determination to do good to the people, not even the ire of the party in power. He suffered endlessly, not being posted in Kolkata till he filed a case against the state government at the Central Administrative Tribunal. He was posted to Kolkata only when I was about to enter college,” recalls Maroona, when describing her father’s plight.

In fact, according to a 9 March report in The Statesman’s Kolkata edition in 2004, reporter Tanmay Chatterjee writes about how the IPS officer was denied his final promotion as an Additional Director General (ADG) which was due before retirement. Instead, he was superseded.

“Is an apparently upright IPS officer being punished for the diligence with which he pursued corruption in officialdom? That, at least, is what a section of IPS officers in the state believe. Now, there are ripples of protest among a section of IPS officers in the state over the State government not promoting Mr Gurucharan Murmu, the IG (Traffic) … Although he is reported to have earned the ire of bureaucrats for being ‘stubborn’, a number of his colleagues believe his ‘unpopularity’ stemmed from his Vigilance Commission tenure. He was transferred within 13 months. When he found that the Commission’s queries were not being answered by Writers Building on time, Mr Murmu started sending the queries directly to the vigilance officers of individual departments. Officials said that Mr Murmu went to the extent of sending a note to the former Vigilance Commissioner Mr RN Kali,” noted Tanmay in his report titled ‘Punished for Doing His Job Well?’

In fact, another major Bengali daily Bartaman reported that during his tenure as Inspector General of the Vigilance Commission, the State government got him out of the door because he was going after some corrupt officials close to the ruling party.

“Today urban India cries her heart out if a member of the subaltern society is ill-treated. Well, I met Mr Murmu, the first Santal who became an IPS officer. Correction: I met a Santal who suffered for doing his job as a police officer….Her father was a brave man. A true Santal. Wish I could do something more worthwhile for him, but the press has limited powers,” says Tanmay.

He goes onto note how Mr. Murmu wasn’t very keen on portraying himself as a victim in the media, and for the most part suffered in silence.

Writing for Shillong-based publication Raoit, Maroona says, “I still retain the SIM card of my father which has bus numbers that would reach him to the Central Administrative Tribunal, Calcutta Bench. He indeed is an adorable man who never ceased to be rooted to the soil. But, he was struck down by a cerebral stroke soon after. I presume it was caused, at least partly, by the relentless persecution by the ruling party over so many years. The principled adivasi officer who had taken on the might of the ruling party of a province for years together, was finally held down to a literally vegetative existence, within a year of his retirement [in 2005].”

Academic Pursuits

During his years of service, amidst all the turbulence, he found solace in academic pursuits, writing essays on the relationship between his native Santali language and other Austric languages with Sanskrit, a passion he left behind after college.

His essays were published in numerous Bengali magazines of repute. Moreover, he was among the founding members of the Paschim Banga Santali Academy and even co-authored Bibliography: Santali Literature published in 1998.

Speaking to The Better India, Maroona says, “He knew Santali, Bengali, English, Sanskrit and Farsi. But this passion for Sanskrit remained within him and he continued to explore the relation between Santali and other Austric languages with Sanskrit and Bengali in his academic essays. The same goes for his decade long engagement with the deciphering of Indus Script. His hypothesis was that the Austric-Santali language might have had some ancestral affinity with the language decoded by the Indus script. Most indigenous communities inherit traditional knowledge about medicinal plants and that is a part of their everyday living. This led to his unfinished doctoral research on ‘Santal Medicine Over Time and Space’.”

Following his retirement, he went back to Muransole, where he envisioned building a rural development complex with a school, hostel and old age home. For this purpose, he even spent 30 per cent of his pension buying 13 bighas of land. Sadly, his vision remained unfulfilled.

“We found out that the person from whom he had bought the 13 bigha land had not registered the land in Jhargram court. My father had informed me that he had given the money for the land to be registered but I think the concerned person had come to know about his cerebral attack and cheated us. The complex remains his lofty unattained dream,” she says.

He eventually passed on 3 May 2012, spending his last few years in a vegetative state. It’s hard not to wonder if all those years of professional persecution finally caught up with him.

“Since the intensity of structural and symbolic violence is more powerful here in West Bengal, those under casteist scanners alone can feel the palpable hatred but evidence is hard to come by. Soon after adivasis enter academic and professional spaces, the process of social exclusion and institutionalized discrimination are set in motion. It is at best, a ‘discriminatory inclusion’ where these people are made to understand that these particular spheres do not “belong” to them and they are an ‘inefficient’ lot,” she argues.

Upon reading Maroona’s personal tribute to her father earlier this month on social media, his senior in the State police wrote, “Maroona, we all know that your father was discriminated against. He was never given charge of a District for which an IPS officer is selected. It is most unfortunate that these discriminations continue in society.”

To this day, the adivasi community remains criminally underrepresented in the State’s bureaucracy, educational institutions and politics.

Nonetheless, Gurucharan emerged out of all that and in his own way made history. He showed generations of young Santals in the state that it’s possible to make it against all odds if one has the determination to withstand hardship that would come by. That’s his legacy.

(All images courtesy Maroona Murmu)

(Edited by Gayatri Mishra)

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A duo shows up on the brightly lit stage of the famous talent hunt, America’s Got Talent. Sonali and Sumanth, the young performers, stand in front of the judges, which include Simon Cowell, notorious for his hard-to-please persona.

Proudly, the duo from Kolkata, says, “We are the BAD Salsa group,” a name that is immediately intriguing for the judges and the audience that waits to be wowed.

Quintessential Bollywood music plays in the background, but the moves get everyone’s attention.

With fast-paced flips, twirls, lifts and a mash-up of salsa moves, the duo performs with smiles on their faces. The ease and confidence with which each dance step is executed show the time and effort that must have gone into perfecting every move.

Throughout the performance, Simon Cowell has a bright smile across his face. And the performance ends to thunderous applause from all.

Sonali Majumdar and Sumanth Maroju express how that day was momentous for them. More so for Bivash Chowdhury, their choreographer, and founder of BAD, which stands for the Bivash Academy of Dance. Bivash has been training the children for close to a decade now. What makes the three special is their journey of hard work and grit.

Sonali is a farmer’s daughter from rural West Bengal. Sumanth, on the other hand, would travel almost seven hours from Odisha to Kolkata to attend the classes. Bivash, their mentor and choreographer, also had an inspiring journey.

In conversation with The Better India, the trio shares their experience while telling us how they achieved global fame.

From a farm to centre stage

“I started dancing when I was only three-years-old. I would often dance on the stage at melas and the events in my village. Everyone would appreciate me and tell my father that he should encourage me to dance,” begins Sonali.

She hails from Sholoardari, a village in West Bengal, almost bordering Bangladesh. Her father is a farmer who grows rice, bananas, and vegetables while her mother is a homemaker. Although struggling to make ends meet, he was determined to fulfill his daughter’s dreams.

“Someone from my village had given my father the contact of Bivash sir, and we decided to take a trip to Kolkata. On tracking down the academy, my father was relieved,” recalls Sonali, who was only about seven-years-old then. She is 16 now.

Her father, Shonnashi Majumdar, 43, has one bigha land and works on others’ lands. He had always felt his daughter’s potential of becoming a dancing star.

“She has been a talented dancer since birth. She couldn’t just walk, she would always be dancing around. And as she grew older, her talent and dedication motivated me further,” he recalls.

The proud father expresses how it was difficult for them to stay apart. But her success was worth the sacrifice.

“She fills my heart with pride every single day. It’s not just me, but everyone in the village feels this way, because she started with almost nothing. As a father, I only did what was in my power, but she accomplished everything else with her hard work and will power. That is truly amazing,” he says.

After speaking with Bivash, Sonali’s father was convinced that she had found the right mentor. “As a farmer, my father would hardly earn Rs 20 a day at the time. He knew that he couldn’t fulfill my dream, especially if I stayed in the village. Hence, he left me in Kolkata. Initially, I missed home a lot, but it got better with time,” shares Sonali.

The optimistic father now hopes that his daughter grows to accomplish everything she ever dreamt of. “We are here to have her back and support her throughout,” he says.

Sonali’s partner, Sumanth, on the other hand, always knew that dance was his true passion. Originally from Bhubaneswar where his father works in the Railways, he discovered Bivash Academy of Dance. He had seen another duo — Akash and Donna — also trained by Bivash go on the stage in India’s Got Talent (A ‘Got Talent’ franchisee of the reality show).

“Because I was so interested in dance, I enrolled in classes across Bhubaneswar, but it was not taught in a way that one could pursue it professionally. When I learnt about Bivash sir’s academy, I told my father about it, and luckily, he supported me,” says the 21-year old. Sumanth had started training at the age of 13.

However, travelling to Kolkata from Bhubaneswar every weekend was not a piece of cake. This trip was followed by four hours of practice on each of the two days until he returned home.

“But looking back, I am glad about the trips. It made me realise how dance was my passion, and I wouldn’t be here now if I had not worked hard then,” he says.

Fast-paced unique dance moves

The dynamic duo wouldn’t have pursued their passion if not for their mentor, Bivash. Not only did he see their potential but also trained them to be world-class dancers.

He began focusing on the two dancers when it was time for him to apply for India’s Got Talent (IGT) in 2012. “When Akash and Donna applied for IGT in 2011, we were the runners-up. But this time, I wanted my dancers to win and chose the two who could ultimately win the show,” recalls the 39-year-old.

Sonali and Sumanth were two of the six people chosen by Bivash who could represent his dance academy on stage. Initially paired with other dancers, Bivash ultimately decided to go with the two and created a dance duo that ultimately won IGT Season 4 that year.

Later, Sonali and Sumanth went on to participate in numerous shows like Jhalak Dikhhla Jaa and Dance Champion, among others. In 2019, when America’s Got Talent wrote to him inviting Sonali and Sumanth for an audition, he knew it was their moment to shine.

After hours of gruelling rehearsals, he did not expect anything less than a thundering response when they finally performed in February this year.

But there are 30 others like Sonali and Sumanth in his academy in Mumbai, popularly known as the Bad World Gurukul. He started it about eight years ago and trains them in hip-hop, salsa, Bollywood, aerial acts, semi-classical and other styles.

Struggling for nearly 12 years until he finally made a name for himself, Bivash understands the need to groom dancers with care and attention.

“I want to train all my students to become professional dancers. I am sure that Sonali and Sumanth can perform on stage for the next 15 years at least until they build a career and become choreographers. When I started, everyone thought that while choosing dancing as a career, one could become a background dancer at the most. I want to change that,” he says.

Now, Sonali and Sumanth are gearing up for the next round of AGT. The duo is excited, and their choreographer has prepared a dance routine to wow the judges. While Sumanth is optimistic about his dancing career in the future, Sonali knows dance is her life.

“No matter what mood I am in, dance has always brought me joy. I love it because I am my happiest self when I dance on stage,” she says.

(Edited by Shruti Singhal)

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The global toll of confirmed cases of COVID-19 has crossed the 16 million mark and more than 6.5 lakh people have succumbed to this deadly virus, which shows no signs of slowing down. While widespread testing is the key to help communities quickly identify infected people, isolate them, and trace their contacts, the tests can take up to 24-hours to deliver results. In rural areas, where lab facilities are not readily available, the lab results are time-consuming and sometimes even inaccurate.

To save the valuable time lost in testing, the Indian Institute of Technology, Kharagpur has launched a first-of-its-kind COVID-19 Rapid Testing Device which can deliver results within 1 hour.

The researchers specify that this is not a kit but a replacement for the RT-PCR machine.

How does it work?

Professor Suman Chakraborthy, Department of Mechanical Engineering, IIT Kharagpur, tells The Better India (TBI), “This 1ft x1ft low-cost portable enclosure is an alternative technology to the Reverse Transcription polymerase chain reaction (RT PCR) machine used to detect the novel coronavirus. The technology works on the principles of microfluidics. Once the oral swabs are inserted into the machine, it produces a simple paper-strip used to run the chemical analysis. Once the chemical analysis is complete, the same unit will produce the results on a smartphone-based application.”

He also says that the same portable unit can be used for a large number of tests, on mere replacement of the paper cartridge and chemicals used for analysis after each test.

Where can it be installed?

The machine can be used anywhere and is designed to be deployed at rural locations with extremely poor resources. The test does not need laboratory facilities to analyse results, and it can be handled by anyone, even someone who has no technical knowledge. It has been proven to produce no false results with remarkable accuracy at par with RT-PCR tests.

“The machine accepts both nasopharyngeal and oral swabs, and within 1 hour the results can be sent to the patient’s phone in a dedicated app and also as a message. Since the device does not have any complicated elements that need handling, the work can be carried out by inexperienced technicians. But, it is important for them to wear necessary protective gear,” says Professor Suman.

While RT PCR testing methods require human intervention to derive test results, this device automatically delivers test results through an application.

Cost of the COVID-19 test

While the device is priced at Rs. 2000, one test is priced at Rs. 400 including the swab test and the final results.

To test the accuracy of the device, the team created synthetic RNA, a replica of the viral RNA extracted from infected patients, and tested them on RT PCR machines, to check if the results matched.

“We did not have access to patient samples, so we replicated the RNA sequences and till date, 500 tests have been analysed using the low-cost device. All their results were similar to what was on the RT PCR machine. Apart from that, this device can also be used to detect other respiratory diseases such as influenza. Only the chemical reagent will need to be replaced,” says Professor Arindam Mondal, Assistant Professor, School of BioScience IIT Kharagpur, a lead researcher in the project.

During a virtual press-meet conducted by IIT Kharagpur, the researchers of the project claimed that unless there is affordable infrastructure, the price of Covid-19 tests will always remain high.

They also plan to commercialise the patented technology, so that the devices can be manufactured by private organisations, and reach larger masses.

The team has approached ICMR and other government bodies to begin tests with samples from patients.

(Edited by Saiqua Sultan)

The Bengali identity is far more complicated than what meets the eye. Once you slowly peel off layers of intellectual snobbery, passionate gluttony, perseverance for procrastination and long afternoon naps, you reveal the inherent Bengali need for celebration and joy at all times.

This rings especially true in a common Bengali saying – “Bangalir baro mashe tero porbon” (Bengalis celebrate 13 festivals in 12 months!). From food, sleep, books, cinema, art, politics to mythical figures, everything is a metaphor for the joy they seek within and beyond.

That is why, ‘Durga Pujo’ is not another religious festival for them, but officially the biggest and grandest display of that emotion of joy, one which began just a few days ago, on September 17 with the much-anticipated Mahalaya.

A day celebrated to usher the Devi Paksha lunar phase of the Hindu calendar, it represents Agomoni (a warm welcome to the mother). According to folklore and mythology, this is when Goddess Durga and her children begin their journey from Mount Kailash to her maternal home on the plains, boarding a vehicle of her choice – the palanquin, boat, a horse or an elephant.

But in addition to the stories and the soaring excitement for the upcoming festival, there is something integral for the ‘pujo-pujo’ feel to be complete- an early morning broadcast of the ‘Mahisasuramardini‘ radio show, by none other than the legendary Birendra Krishna Bhadra.

His voice and delivery of the Sanskrit shlokas in the musical cantata has now become synonymous with Mahalaya itself.

A prominent Bengali playwright, this man’s 4 am version of ‘Chandipath‘ (chanting from Chandi) not only convinced generations of Bengalis across the globe to make the ultimate sacrifice of their beloved sleep but also revolutionized Indian radio by becoming the oldest and longest-running radio show in the country.

89 years and running

On the eve of Mahalaya, almost every Bengali household makes preparations for the radio programme scheduled to start the next day in the chilly pre-dawn hours.

At the stroke of 4 am, the bellowing sound of a conch shell echoes from the radio. This marks the beginning of the popular ‘Chandipath‘ on All India Radio (AIR). It is then followed by the rising notes of a chorus chanting Sanskrit shlokas.

And then comes the treat, the striking baritone voice of Birendra Krishna Bhadra piercing through the harmonies of classical singers to begin the recitation that describes the epic battle between Goddess Durga and the demon king Mahishasura.

The 89-minute long audio montage first started as a live-performance in 1931, with an orchestra and chorus clad in white dhotis and red-bordered white sarees. However, since 1966, AIR has been broadcasting the pre-recorded version of the show every year on Mahalaya.

Scripted by Bani Kumar and with music composed by Pankaj Mullick, the programme is a combination of devotional songs, classical music, acoustic melodrama, traditional instrumentals and Sanskrit shlokas.

But, it is the sonorous narration by Bhadra that sets it apart from anything that came before or after. Even after 89 years, it is this version that has managed to singularly captivate the audience, both old and new, religious, spiritual or otherwise.

An interesting testimony to this can be found the year 1976 when AIR decided to experiment and replace Bhadra’s version of ‘Chandipath‘ with the one narrated by a famous Bengali actor and icon, Uttam Kumar and called the show, ‘Durga Durgatiharini‘.

According to AIR radio presenter Ratna Sen, in a 2008 report, this experiment caused a jolt among the Mahalaya patrons. As a result, Akashvani Bhavan faced a lot of flak and outrage, demanding the return of Bhadra’s show to the airways.

“Some phone calls were so caustic that we had to slam the phone down,” she said to the Indian Express. The information minister at the time, LK Advani, was then forced to issue a public retraction and bring back Bhadra’s version in 1977.

Although Bhadra passed away in 1991, his recorded voice continues to mesmerize listeners, not just on the radio but also other online platforms like YouTube and other mobile-based applications.

Fighting the demons of social injustice and discrimination

On the day of Mahalaya, one narrates the tale of the victory of good over evil with Goddess Durga defeating the buffalo-headed demon king, Mahishasura. Although this strong message presented in the unique voice of Bhadra bagged much-deserved appreciation from the very beginning, the journey to this recognition was not devoid of challenges.

One such hurdle was that of caste-based discrimination.

Back in 1931, when the programme was about to begin, several people from a community of orthodox Hindu Brahmins of Bengal protested against Bhadra’s involvement in the programme. According to them, he was unfit for the recitation of ‘Chandipath‘ as he was not of the right caste. Even one of his superiors at AIR touted this opinion against his performance in the Mahisasuramardini, according to this report.

But Bani Kumar turned a deaf ear to all of the protestations and progressed with the plan. Interestingly, as it transpired, in the team of musicians and singers backing Bhadra, many were Muslims. The final outcome of this collaboration of Muslim musicians and a Bengali Kayastha man, was so authentic and magical, that its later sophisticated version by Uttam Kumar (a Hindu Brahmin) was harshly rejected as ‘commercial attempt’.

Fame, lost in translation

As a playwright, Bhadra wrote several plays including Mess No.49, produced radio plays, directed a theatre adaptation of Sahib Bibi Gulam based on Bimal Mitra’s novel and even dramatised Bankim Chandra Chattopadhyay’s novel Subarna Golak, but it was the radio programme of Mahisasuramardini that made him famous.

A biography on Bhadra, mentions how his oratorical skills were honed by the ‘loud and clear recitation’ of Shakespeare by his grandmother. It was from her that he learnt his first lessons in Sanskrit as well.

Although owing to these skills, scores of Bengalis today vouch for his version as the absolute best and the reverberations of his striking voice have echoed all over the world, this fame, however, was never translated into any substantial monetary gain.

A man who embraced a simple life, he continued his contract job with AIR for a petty salary of Rs 75 a month and did not even receive a pension when he retired in 1970.

Shockingly, on the Mahalaya day of 2006, AIR sold the copyright of the show to Saregama (HMV) and sent a cheque of Rs 50,917 to his daughter, Sujata Bhadra as royalty. Post this, Bhadra’s version became more popular owing to the burgeoning sale of copies recorded on CDs and cassette tapes.

In spite of his personal struggles, this man’s unflinching voice has inspired millions for decades. With a hair-rising quiver in his tone, he has managed to rouse a myriad of emotions- from thrill, nostalgia, fear to courage and peace- waking up generations of Bengalis to a new dawn of hope.

(Edited by Vinayak Hegde)

Durga Pujo, the annual festival that pays homage to Goddess Durga is all set to commence on October 22. An interesting tradition in West Bengal is the many unique forms of the Goddess various organising committees display in their pandals (temporary sheds) every year. These usually reflect current events, to a large extent.

In 2020, amid the ‘new normal’ of digital pandal visits and home-delivery of Bhog, the plight of migrant workers during the lockdown, who had to walk barefoot for days on end under the scorching sun, has found a beautiful tribute.

Have a look at the Goddess in this pandal erected by the Barisha Club Durga Puja committee in Behala, Kolkata.

According to an article by The Telegraph, this statue was built by artist Pallab Bhowmick. It represents a mother as Goddess Durga along with her children – Goddess Lakshmi with an owl in her arms, Goddess Saraswati with a swan in her hand, and the young boy in her arms who signifies the God Kartikeya. A halo surrounds the mother and children with 10 hands – a traditional motif of Goddess Durga.

Interestingly, after this image went viral on Twitter, many on Twitter pointed out how celebrating Duraj Puja with a theme based on issues prevailing in the society at the time has always been common. Check out this rather special one from the World War Two era.

The vegetable oil in our kitchens may soon be replaced with a healthier blend. The same solution could also turn into a healthier alternative for solid fats in dairy products, in the form of powdered vegetable oil consumables. All of that thanks to an award-winning innovation by IIT-Kharagpur researchers, that promises healthy vegetable oil rich in antioxidants and low on saturated fat.

Researchers at IIT-Kharagpur claim their patented blend of oils, which is mixed with market-available vegetable oil, makes it low on cholesterol, trans and saturated fats.

“The proportion of saturated fats varies in the content. However, our oil is endowed with natural antioxidants along with the right proportion of polyunsaturated and monounsaturated fatty acids. They are commonly known as (MUFA & PUFA),” says Hari Mishra, Department of Agricultural and Food Engineering.

Hari, who heads the project, said the oils are carefully chosen and blended in a particular proportion, combined with patented technology, making it a good replacement for existing vegetable oils. The team bagged the Gandhian Young Technological Innovation (SITARE-GYTI) Award 2020 for this new oil.

Unique blend

“The oils, endowed with antioxidants blend and synergise with each other. During the process the synthetic antioxidants are replaced with natural antioxidants, and maintain a stable proportion of fatty acids,” Hari said. The professor said that the same oil, when emulsified and powdered, could replace the dairy fat.

Monalisha Pattnaik, a researcher at IIT-Kharagpur, added that synthetic antioxidants are often added externally to market vegetable oils to increase the shelf life of the oil. “What we achieved is to blend the antioxidants which are already endowed in these oils. The blend of two or more oils increases shelf life and triggers synergistic effects,” she added.

Monalisha added the majority of the population in the country cannot afford olive oil or other healthy alternatives. “This blend is low-cost, filled with proper nutrients, and fills the lacunae in existing vegetable oils,” she said.

The researcher added that there is also a shortage of dairy fats which can not only be compensated by this product, but this product is healthier as well.

“The solid oil in powdered form could potentially replace dairy fat in bakery and ice creams for a healthier heart,” Monalisha said.

“The oil powder can replace dairy fat as well as unhealthy margarine or low-quality palm oil often used by businesses. The oil powder can also help reduce adulteration in food items caused by the shortage of solid fats,” Hari adds.

Hari said the team is now scaling up the laboratory model to commercialise it.

Describing the difficulties faced during the project, “There were many steps where the oil to be encapsulated needed not to ooze out. It had to be ensured that the powder form of the oil remained in that state for as long as needed.” Monalisha said.

Monalisha claimed that great care had to be taken while drying the emulsion. As such oil powder combinations can easily turn into a rubbery substance or crumble into lumps, which would then be unacceptable to the market. “The free flow of the powder had to remain intact with a guaranteed shelf life of the product,” she added.

“Many companies are approaching for potential collaboration, and the viability is getting explored at the moment. The cost of the vegetable oil will be almost the same as the ones available in the market with probably 10 per cent added costs,” the professor said.

“Some processes in conventional oil processes will get eliminated and replaced with the patented technique. So the costs would remain almost the same,” Hari added.

(Edited by Vinayak Hegde)

Jugaad – a flexible approach to problem-solving that uses limited resources in an innovative way.

The reason I start with this definition of a colloquial Hindi term is only because the protagonist of my story—Karimul Haque (55), who is also referred to as ‘Ambulance Dada’—truly embodies the meaning of the word jugaad.

Losing his mother due to the non-availability of an ambulance in time led him to start his own motorcycle ambulance in 1998. Since then he has ferried over 5,500 patients from across 20 villages in West Bengal’s Jalpaiguri district. In 2017, Karimul was also awarded with a Padma Shri for his service. Karimul is a stellar example of the phrase – ‘service above self’.

No one should die for lack of treatment

Having seen his mother pass away due to lack of timely access to treatment, Karimul says that his constant thought was to find a way to ensure that this does not happen to anyone else. He says, “It was just another day when I was working in the tea garden. I saw a fellow worker collapse and without thinking about it, I put him on my motorbike, tied him to me and took him to the nearest hospital.” It worked and Karimul managed to save his life.

“That incident was all the push I needed. I decided to use my motorbike to ferry those in need,” he says, adding, “I realised that in my area, a motorbike works better than a van or a full ambulance. The reason why a bike ambulance works best in this area is because the roads are not conducive for a larger vehicle to cross and sometimes even the rivers overflow. It is easiest to maneuver a motorbike in these conditions.”

‘People would mock and even laugh at my face’

Since the ambulance that Karimul operates is not one that follows conventional norms, he says he was often mocked and even laughed at. “But once they saw the work that I was able to do and the number of people I was able to help, people’s perception started to change,” he says. Besides always being there for people when he is called upon, Karimul also seems to always have a solution to the problems people come to him with.

Not just an ambulance service provider

With the passage of time, Karimul and his sons also got trained in administering basic first aid to patients. He says, “Today, I also organise regular health camps in the village. The kind of poverty that the villagers live in often stops them from visiting a doctor or the hospital. With these camps, many small niggling health issues are being corrected.”

Karimul has also gone one step further and converted a part of the land his house is built on to serve as a hospital. “We have tie-ups with doctors who also do video consultations now. Basic tests like sugar and blood pressure are also conducted at the hospital. In the case of an emergency, I am also trained to administer saline drips,” he says.

Dr Soumen Mondal, a general surgeon practicing in Jalpaiguri says, “I have known ‘Ambulance Dada’ – Karimul since 2013. Not just dedicated but he is also someone who will go out of his way to help those in need. I have personally trained him in many of the basic first aid techniques and often help through video consults as well.”

Even busier during the pandemic

At a time when a majority of us stayed indoors during the lockdown period, Karimul and his sons have been busy. “Besides ferrying patients to the hospital on my motorbike ambulance, we also saw that many of them were not even able to afford one meal a day. That was when we decided to start supplying rice to as many people as we could,” says Karimul.

So far close to 1,000 people have benefitted by the rice that Karimul and his family have distributed and another 200 families have been provided with cooked food. “These are migrant labourers, and with no work, they had no income whatsoever. We started cooking at home and serving these families,” says Raju, the elder son of Karimul.

He goes on, “Now people know baba (Karimul) and we also get donations and sponsorships. We have used the money to buy and provide blankets and food to those in need near our village.”

Raju ends the conversation by saying, “We have grown up seeing him readily available to everyone at whatever time they needed. Even though he is in his 50s, the energy he has sometimes even puts me to shame.”

This nine-times over grandfather says, “I may be 55 years of age but mentally and even physically I am not a day older than 30. It is my duty to serve those in need and will do so until the day I can’t any more.”

(Edited by Yoshita Rao)

Despite the freezing temperatures of West Bengal’s Dadpur village and lack of sunlight, a couple of men, wrapped in shawls, are intently working in different corners of the Tarapada Sitar House at 6 am.  

Surrounded by materials like lao (bottle gourd), toona wood, cellulite paper and bamboo splinters, their work to make a fine sitar is accurately driven by clockwork. 

The man with glasses is carving intricate patterns of golap pata (rose plant leaves) on the sitar gourd while humming to the tunes of bodhu kon alo. Sitting diagonally opposite him is a senior artisan, who is playing the same tune on a newly-made sitar. Meanwhile, another artisan is placing bamboo splinters inside the sitar’s hollow structure to keep the inner layer of the sitar gourd stable. 

The scene is something out of an art film — the flakes from wooden carvings settle on the floor, sympathetic strings entwine on an artisan’s palm and the bold red paint comfortably slides on the instrument’s neck. 

These artisans don’t hold a bachelor’s degree nor have they undergone any formal training in music, yet their knowledge on differentiating between an ordinary sitar and a high-quality one is phenomenal. 

This is all thanks to years of strenuous hard work and an extraordinary commitment towards the process of making sitars, and of course, their guru — Tarapada Halder.

The late Tarapada, fondly known as ‘Tara babu’, is the man behind making this small village of Dadpur one of the prime manufacturing sitar hubs of India.

His passion for making sitar and empowering the other villagers by training them, starting from the 1960s, has improved the overall financial situation over the years.

According to his son, Shyamal, who took over the business in 1990, Tarapada has taught around 1,000 craftsmen, many of whom have gone on to start their own business.

The sitars made by his disciples are mainly sold to vendors in Varanasi, Kolkata, Mumbai and Lucknow. From here, they are rebranded and further sold to customers across India and the world. 

But the man behind it all came from a past filled with struggles.

A Wage Worker’s Humble Beginnings

Tarapada lost his father when he was barely five and the family slipped into poverty. His mother took up menial jobs at construction sites and people’s houses. Tarapada was forced to grow up fast. 

At the tender age of 8, his hands were lifting bricks instead of books. At 16, he migrated to Kolkata with a hope to improve his condition. Little did he know the short trip to the city of the joy would be life-changing.

After working at a tea stall in Girish Park for some months, he joined the Radha Krishna Sharma and Co, a music company. As a wage worker, he earned Rs 2 daily. It was here he was introduced to sitar properly. 

“Seeing musicians handle the instrument ignited a curiosity in my father’s mind. He learnt about the parts of the sitar and often helped in glueing them together. In no time, he picked up the basics of sitar manufacturing. His passion was such that he moved to Lucknow in his 20s to learn the karigari from the experts. He even left behind his new bride in Dadpur. For almost a year, my mother didn’t know where he had gone. Eventually, she moved to Lucknow where I and my siblings were born. We stayed there for nine years until baba perfected his craft and then moved back,” Shyamal tells The Better India. 

Empowering Villagers & Establishing A Legacy 

One of the major reasons why Tarapada returned home, says Shyamal, was to impart his expertise and financially uplift the families. Majority of the people in the village were earning Rs 2 for their excruciating work on manufacturing Mangalorean tiles. 

From taking free workshops for villagers to hiring some for setting up the business, Tarapada passed down his knowledge to hundreds of people over the next five decades. 

Shyamal was one of his earliest, and probably his youngest, student. 

“Since baba manufactured the instruments inside our house premises, I would sit with him after school and observe the process. It was nothing short of magic. I was astonished to see how calabash took the shape of sitar’s beautiful base. Watching the workers carve a piece of wood into a leaf was my favourite part. I started with sticking the strings,” recalls Shyamal. 

Shyamal was not the only student of Tarapada who actively started making sitars at 15. Ghulam Rasol was another devoted disciple, who was, interestingly enough, a second generational student of the guru. 

Ghulam spent nearly a decade honing the craft from Tarapada before opening his own sitar manufacturing business. Today, he supplies nearly 80 sitars every month to wholesalers in Mumbai, Bengaluru and Chennai.  

“Tara babu was the best teacher I could get. His unmatched skills, patience to teach and being assertive about perfection made me what I am today. He never took any short cuts and made each piece with the utmost affection. My son also learnt from him today both of us manage the business,” Ghulam, who is now in his 60s, tells The Better India. 

Like Ghulam, there are close to 15 families who are independent instrument makers. Along with the sitar, they also supply other string instruments like tanpuras, and travel sitars (which have a flat sound box or toomba), vina and santur. 

Each sitar fetches anywhere between Rs 5,000 to 15,000 depending on the type of wood used in its making. For instance, a sitar made from toon wood, which is generally used to make furniture and ships, is priced at Rs 12,000 and one made of segun (teak) costs much more.  

At this point, Shyamal is quick to mention that these prices are for the vendors who eventually sell the sitars at much higher rates. Since they already have an established market and a brand name, they take the lion’s share of profit. “But, even today, we do not get fair prices,” he adds. 

For Shyamal, carrying forward his father’s hard-earned legacy and preserving the craft is more important than these financial constraints. It is no wonder that he was not deterred one bit when his brother quit the business and chose another profession. 

 To make a Sitar 

Complex, tedious and meditative — these are three words Shyamal uses to describe the process that can take days and sometimes weeks. 

“The base of the sitar is made from a hard-shell gourd and toona wood. The gourd weighing up to 30 kilos is cut and soaked in water for 8-10 hours. Then, it is kept under the sun for nearly a month till the moisture completely evaporates. The sun-drying process makes the shell sturdy. This step is very crucial as it determines the overall quality of the sitar,” explains Shyamal. 

Once the gourd is ready, it is cut open in half and then the long panels are carved out of wood. The two are glued together and the gourd’s neck is covered with a wooden patch. Craftsmen engrave exquisite leaves on wooden pieces that are then attached to the base of the sitar. In the final leg, the gigantic piece is painted, scrubbed and polished.

After the sitar is ready, the artisans play the instrument to test it. They use their legs to play the strings and because it is untouched and sharp, they often cut themselves. 

Even though the entire procedure is time-consuming and labour intensive, Shyamal’s happiness after each piece is made knows no bounds.

With their sincerity and honesty towards their craft, people like Shyamal and his father Tarapada are hard to find today. They are the true but lesser-known gems of our country that need to be celebrated.

Image source: Shyamal Halder

You can reach Shyamal Halder at +91 91633 34003

Edited by Yoshita Rao

Up until 1997, a small hillock in Jharbagda village in West Bengal’s Purulia district had a single tree next to a small temple, which priests and a handful of locals would visit occasionally. The village, located about a 100 km from Jamshedpur, was surrounded by about 50 km of barren land and faced extreme weather conditions.

Owing to hot and humid winds blowing through the summer, harsh heat waves made human habilitation difficult for 300 families residing in the foothills of the mountain.

However, 22 years later, in 2020, the hill and its surrounding 387-acre land is covered with dense forest and is home to a variety of wildlife. Farmers can cultivate two crops per year to increase their income. This transformation in the landscape is credited to years of hard work and efforts the villagers in this area have undertaken.

From one tree to 4.5 lakh trees

The villagers started planting trees with the help of Tagore Society for Rural Development (TSRD), an NGO, and with years of persistent efforts, the hamlet now has cooler air, increased groundwater levels, and a prosperous future.

“Bohot, bohot jyada garmi tha (It used to be very, very hot),” says 50-year-old Sujit Mohanty, a farmer who owns 3.5 acres of land. He adds that rocks used to emit heatwaves in the scorching summer heat, and the effects of this lasted till late at night, making it difficult to seek respite even after dusk.

“We never thought something could grow in this shallow land. About 60% of rainwater would run off the surface, and groundwater would never be replenished,” he recalls. Farmers in the area say unfavourable conditions limited their ability to grow cereals, pulses or paddy once a year.

In 1997, a team from TSRD visited the site and decided to start planting trees in the area. “We learned that the area had a forest a few decades before. But the zamindari system (a permanent settlement act introduced to collect tax from peasants) destroyed the environment,” says Badal Maharana, the NGO’s team leader.

Badal says that after multiple visits to analyse the soil, geographic conditions and the nearest availability of water, four categories of plants were identified that fit the geographic characteristics. “The decision was made to plant varieties that would bear fruits, and provide fuel, food and timber essential for the livelihood of the villagers,” he adds.

He says work began in 1998, with the NGO intending to plant 36,000 trees over the next five years in three blocks drawn in the vicinity. “We spent four years maintaining the trees and protecting it from external threats. The work of tree plantation continued over the years, and we planted 4.5 lakh trees of 72 different species. About 3.2 lakh survived. It was difficult to find water and provide enough of it at all times,” Badal says.

The trees were guarded by people to prevent the threat of damage or vandalism.

Wildlife finds a welcoming home

“We had only three villagers to help us plant the saplings during the initial days. They would often say that nothing could grow here, and that even if the plant survives, it won’t bear fruits and the plantation will soon be dry,” Badal says.

But as more trees started bearing fruits and flourished, more people joined the effort.

The hard work started showing results around 2007, when 11 elephants visited the site. “Migratory birds, snakes and small animals like rabbits also started visiting the area, but having elephants visit was exciting,” Badal tells The Better India, adding that this was an indication of how the environment in the village was becoming more welcoming to wildlife and biodiversity.

Since then, there have been sightings of the Indian bison, fox, and various other animals in the village. Nandalal Bakshi, treasurer of TSRD, says the forest is regenerating itself, and that 5.28 lakh trees were recently counted and registered.

During the plantation drives, villagers also dug trenches and carved gullies between rocks and boulders to arrest water and facilitate percolation. Natural structures to slow the speed of rainwater run-off were erected, allowing groundwater to recharge. A water pond was built for wild animals, and villagers were restricted from using it.

Community-managed forest resources

Apart from reviving the habitat, villagers also experienced benefits of the newly-developed green zone themselves. Nandalal says the dry land holds enough moisture for farmers to take a second cultivation in a year. “Groundwater levels have increased, making water accessible at 20 feet,” he says. The improvement has enabled villagers to install solar water pumps to extract water,” he says.

The combined efforts of the NGO and the villagers have helped a population of 30,000 people across 21 villages. Nandalal adds that a guard is hired for a few to guard the forest. “No trees are allowed to be chopped, and no forest resources can be accessed without permissions. A forest committee was formed by the villagers to regulate the use of resources,” he says.

He also says that only mature, dry or fallen trees are allowed to be carried out of the forest for firewood. “Every day, six women from different villages collect dry leaves as fuel if needed. Daily expenses on kerosene for cooking come up to Rs 10-20 a day. A recent study shows that the villagers have been able to save Rs 6 lakh by using natural resources,” he says.

With assured water supply at their disposal, the farmers in the village are working their way towards progressive farming.

A self-sustained village

Badal says many farmers are now practising farming in 100% of their landholding. “Earlier, farmers could only use some portion of the total land they owned, but now, they can utilise the entirety of it. The farmers are also working to increase crop intensity and achieve an output of 120 per cent, which is growing even further. Besides cereals and pulses, they’re also growing vegetables and breeding poultry and cattle for increased income,” he adds.

“The organisation has not planted any tree since 2006, after the funding ended. Over the last few years, the state government has come in support of the community efforts,” he says. Badal says the government now funds water conservation or other projects, while the NGO’s role involves planning and monitoring initiatives that will benefit villagers.

Sujit says the air has never felt cooler in the village. “There is plenty of oxygen from the forest, fresh air everywhere, and no hot air emanates from the rocky mountains. The villagers have prospered, and there is more room for experimenting in farming,” he says.

(Edited by Yoshita Rao)

In May 2020, cyclone Amphan in West Bengal and Bangladesh destroyed everything that lay ahead of its path. Apart from West Bengal, the natural disaster left a sea of destruction in the fertile Sunderbans, home to millions and uprooted their lives within hours.

“The cyclone instilled fear among us. For the entire night we heard strong winds in the dark and did not know what was happening,” says Saheb Dani, a 31-year-old farmer from Bally island in the Sunderbans about 2.5 hours away, from Kolkata.

Saheb says the villagers in the island returned to see houses collapsed, trees uprooted, rivers overflowing and farms submerged in water. “The roof of my house blew off and the walls were damaged. I found fish dead in the pond and plants washed away from the fields,” he recollects.

Along with Saheb, there were 15,000 such people from the island affected by the extreme weather phenomenon.

Six months later, the people on the island have new houses, a stitching centre for women, a school and a better income. The visible transformation in the island has come about because of the efforts of Kolkata-based 22-year-old Aayush Sarda who visited the village for the relief effort.

“I formed ‘Ek Packet Umeed’, a student-volunteer organisation when the Nepal earthquake struck in 2015. Starting with 10 volunteers to provide relief work for the disaster, we continued working to help specially-abled and the needy. There are over 100 volunteers now,” Aayush says.

Hope stems from the young generation

As soon as the aftermath of cyclone Amphan wore off, the volunteers visited Bally.

“We selected seven villages that were severely damaged and raised Rs 13 lakh to rebuild 1,250 houses and help with other relief work. However, over the weeks we realised that more help was needed and raising funds was becoming increasingly difficult. Moreover, the villagers started relying more on the relief aid,” he says.

Aayush says that is when he realised that temporary efforts would not sustain for long. “The men in the villages were able but were completely traumatised due to the devastation and fear. We needed to help the villagers get back on their feet and become independent again. That is when we decided to use the existing skills in farmers and empower women to help them in the process,” he adds.

The founder of the NGO informs that the occupation for 90 per cent of the people in the Sunderbans is fishing and collecting honey. “Honey is indigenous to Bengal, and we decided to use it as a source of strength to make the farmers in the villages independent and help them increase their livelihood,” he says.

The NGO formed a social enterprise, ‘Sweetness of Ethics’ by training the villagers to source honey from the forest of Sunderbans in an ethical way, process it by cleaning and filtration methods, and eventually, packaging it.

“The traditional method was to collect the honey and sell it in buckets. But there was a lot more that could improve to fetch more value for the pure natural produce. The volunteers trained the villagers to market the product priced at Rs 450 for 500 grams,” Aayush tells The Better India. About 1,200 bottles of 500 kilos each sell each month.

Rebuilding a village

The founder says 80 per cent of the earnings were reinvested in the villages to build houses, a stitching centre for women and a school for children. The remaining income of 20 per cent went in expanding the business. The practice continues to attract more people for the cause.

The income of the families have increased as selling honey became an additional source of livelihood. Saheb says that he was never involved in selling honey from the forest before the enterprise started. “Now I earn about Rs 6,000 a month from selling honey along with other farming activities,” he adds.

Aayush says that shifting the mindsets of villagers to become independent and training them was a challenge. He adds that it was also challenging to work on the social and cultural aspects of the village. “The villagers had experienced cases of cheating through chit funds, not being paid for the honey sourced by them and other similar bad incidents. The concept of bottling and selling the honey was alien to them. It took a lot of time to build trust and get accepted by the residents. The school, which will become operational in January 2021, was built especially for children who lost their fathers in tiger attacks. Such initiatives helped build relationships among the villagers,” he adds.

The initiative of selling honey started with 10 families has now expanded to 50. The average income of farmers has increased from Rs 2,500 to Rs 10,000, the NGO claims. It plans to adopt 10 more villages by 2030 and improve the local economy.

To buy pure Sunderbans honey and support the locals, call +919735021522.

(Edited by Yoshita Rao)

For 20-year-old Sandhya Rai, a rugby player representing India, it took four years, a series of news coverage, and photos in front of the Eiffel Tower in Paris to convince villagers in her area that she plays rugby and excels at it.

Sandhya’s parents are tea labourers, who spent their lives plucking leaves in the Saraswati tea estate of Baikunthapur forest, located in east Siliguri, West Bengal.

But Sandhya chose to lead an entirely different life.

The national rugby player is the only Indian among the top 32 ‘unstoppable’ women players from Asia, part of Asia’s Rugby’s Unstoppable Campaign. The campaign aims to promote the sport among girls, and highlight inspiring stories of women who battle all odds to achieve success.

Rugby was introduced to Sandhya in 2013, when some players from the Jungle Crows, an amateur rugby team from Kolkata, came to train children in the village.

‘Rugby: Not a girl’s game’

“There are many hardships in village life, and I have faced many challenges since my childhood,” Sandhya says, adding, “Girls never played any sports in my village. Only boys were allowed to play, the girls were confined to schools or house chores. When I started playing rugby with other girls, people called us names, demotivated us, and even questioned why we were playing a sport meant for boys.”

Trouble escalated for the girls when they decided to give up their churidars (a traditional Indian dress) and trousers for shorts. “Running in lengthy trousers was uncomfortable, and hence, we started wearing shorts. The villagers did not take this well, and failed to understand our needs,” she says.

Sandhya adds that none of the villagers had ever been out of the village boundary for any purpose. The village is so remotely located that electricity reached the area only recently, and pursuing higher secondary education in the area is rare. “When the villagers learned about the team travelling to play tournaments, they doubted us. They even scared us saying that we will be sold in the cities and face such other atrocities. It was difficult to convince them otherwise,” she recalls.

Even when the team earned a trophy in a national tournament in 2015, the villagers alleged that it was bought, Sandhya says.

Earning the village’s trust

Things changed when, in 2017, the team represented India at the World Paris Games. After sharing pictures of their trip, which included one with the Eiffel Tower glittering behind the girls, the villagers believed and eventually started supporting them.

Sandhya says that after local newspapers and other media hailed their success, the villagers felt proud of their achievements. So far, nine girls have made it the national rugby team from her village. The young girl says that her unending struggles and drive to never give up have made her “unstoppable”. “I remember being very aggressive and ignoring whatever the villagers were saying about us. They did not understand our perspective, and all of us had to fight various personal battles,” she says.

Khelo Rugby and the Jungle Crow Foundation (JCF) is supporting Sandhya’s education and other finances.

Sandhya is currently pursuing a graduate degree in Sports Management from the George Group of Colleges, Kolkata. Her days are spent waking up early, training students in her village, and then self training for the remaining hours. “I wake up at 6 am,” she says, adding, “I miss sleeping. If I get one day to myself, I spend it all just sleeping.”

She also says she doesn’t follow any particular diet or nutrition regime. “I eat whatever I please, and burn all the calories by running a lot. The diet does not affect my game,” she chuckles.

Watch Sandhya speak how Rugby changed her life.

Sandhya wants every girl in rural India to fight societal prejudices. “Girls should focus on what they wish to achieve, and find someone who can support them through it. It always helps if the parents are supportive too. I would not have achieved what I wanted without the support of mine,” she tells The Better India.

The young rugby player also wishes for the government to promote the sport and provide financial assistance for better performance of the team. “Many aspiring players drop out due to lack of funds. If supported, we can achieve a lot more,” she says.

Harinder Singh, general manager at JCF, says the village now knows what rugby is, and people have begun prioritising sports and education. “When we started in 2013, the passing percentage of Class X students was less than 30 per cent. In 2020, it increased to over 65 per cent,” he says. He adds, “As for Sandhya, her life journey is a true representation of what unstoppable means. She truly deserves the title.”

As I congratulate India’s fourth-highest civilian award, the Padma Shri winner, for his exceptional contribution towards bringing global fame to the traditional art of Jamdani and Tangail sarees, a humble voice replies, ‘Thank you’. The 70-year-old weaver, Biren Kumar Basak, from West Bengal’s Phulia village is soft-spoken, and just like the Jamdani prints he weaves, he is humble and occasionally explodes with vibrancy.

He has designed sarees for several well-known personalities — from Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee to the legendary director Satyajit Ray.

His skills and precision have bagged him several accolades including the Certificate of Merit (Ministry of Textiles, 2009), Sant Kabir Award (2013), Guinness Book of World Records for longest saree (2018), among others.

However, he never anticipated winning the Padma Shri. “I was speechless. I never fathomed such an honour would be given to a Bengali weaver like me and the numerous weavers associated with it,” Basak tells The Better India.

But he likes to treat all his credentials and awards as by-products of a superior goal — to preserve and continue the legacy of this beautiful art form by empowering thousands of local weavers. Basak then begins his story of how he came to own a 50-crore company that sells an average of two crore sarees every month.

Humble Beginnings

Originally from Tangail in East Pakistan, Basak was forced to migrate to Phulia in 1961 due to communal tensions. Since they came to India without any assets, their financial resources depleted swiftly. The dire circumstances didn’t allow him or his five other siblings to study as they took up odd jobs at weaving factories.

He spent his teenage years selling sarees door-to-door and worked his way up to build his own empire in the City of Joy.

Recalling his childhood, Basak says, “Communal riots began when I was in class 6. I still remember being terrified every time a crowd of people gathered in our neighbourhood. I didn’t understand much but knew that we weren’t safe there. Like many other families, we came to India as refugees.”

Surviving commanded priority over education. So, at the age of 13, Basak joined his father, Banko Bihari Basak, at a local saree weaving unit earning Rs 2.5 per day in 1964. His father was a master weaver of Tangail and Jamdani saree, and hailing from a generational weaver’s family, it was a skill junior Basak learnt swiftly.

Basak worked at the unit from 1962 to 1972 after which he started selling sarees in Kolkata with his brother, Dhiren Basak. “We would leave home in Phulia at 5 am and take a local train to Kolkata. There, we would spend the entire day selling sarees door-to-door. Then take the last train back to Phulia. My father would wait for us at the station holding a hurricane light as we’d reach late.”

Their routine was set. However, Basak saw no tangible growth until after a few months when he accidentally met a minister’s wife in a handicraft store. Seeing the two dejected and exhausted brothers, the lady asked them to visit her at home with more sarees.

“The next day we went to her house only to find a crowd of women waiting to buy our sarees. We made a great sale that day. She made sure that her entire network of women knew about us and opened us to a huge world of clientele. From army wives, intellectuals, to bureaucrats, we were selling sarees to many high-profile people. One of them was a High Court judge, Padma Khastgir,” adds Basak.

The selling price per saree gradually increased from Rs 10 to Rs 100. The duo saved enough to purchase a place in Southern Park and established Dhiren and Biren Basak and Company in 1985.

Mastering the Craft

In 1987, Basak parted ways with his brother and returned to Phulia with a hope to financially empower local weavers and provide them with a platform that he never had.

He started Biren Basak and Company with eight staff members in his house and trained them in Tangail and Jamdani weaving style. Alongside he rigorously practised and evolved his own skills. He innovated his own designs and experimented with challenging techniques.

Defined by intricately hand-woven rich motifs, Jamdani is a weft technique of weaving. By virtue of its intricate design, it is considered to be an advanced and challenging hand-weaving technique. The process is time-consuming and each saree can take up to a year.

Case in point is the Ramayana saree for which he secured a place in the Limca Book of Records. It took him nearly 2.5 years to weave the first Dhakai saree with embroidery designs depicting the Ramayana Epic. Likewise, he took over a year to weave a saree that contained 1.25 lakh words.

Other sarees have designs and patterns that are woven with traditional Bengali and Indian motifs or are based on Hindu mythological themes such as Lord Krishna, Lord Ganesha. His collection also includes illustrious people of India and creating unique pieces of art on tant fabrics, which have become his trademark. Tangail sarees are similar to Jamdani. They have figured motifs in a transparent backdrop with extra warp on the borders.

Basak can weave sarees from various materials like cotton, silk, mulberry or non-mulberry, and khadi muslin. “From a Rs 200 saree to one costing in lakhs, which is made of pure gold, I have made it all and hope to weave a stronger legacy for Bengali weaver community in the future,” he says and adds, “Presently, I am working with 5,000 artisans to make them self-reliant.”

His timely delivery, exceptional craftsmanship and artistic knowledge have garnered him clients from all over the world along with prominent Indian personalities such as singer Lata Mangeshkar, cricketer Sourav Ganguly, noted classical musician Ustad Amjad Ali Khan, among others.

The awards and a prestigious clientele even landed him calls from big designers; however, he prefers collaboration over simply selling them the sarees. He says, “I have always been open to working with big names in the fashion industry. It is always a pleasure to see my work being appreciated by more people. But, I cannot support the trend where big designers buy sarees from us for the right price and then sell it with minor changes for almost ten times the original price.”

Asked what is his secret recipe behind establishing a successful empire, Basak says, “I have no set strategy per se. You see, I still don’t see myself as a businessman, but a mere artist. I believe the money will run after you if you manage to stay true to your work and focus on achieving success through quality.”

Starting as a weaver on a meagre income to creating his own business, and from being a door-to-door salesman to customers lining up outside his store in Phulia, Basak has certainly come a long way.

Edited by Yoshita Rao

Four-year-old Ramendra was at his grandfather’s home, taking an afternoon nap, during one summer holiday. All the doors were closed, and the curtains had been drawn, leaving the room drenched in darkness, but for a single beam of sunlight streaming in through the crack in the door. Ramendra’s curious eyes followed the beam of sunlight, right up to the wall opposite the door. The wall, like a cinema screen, came alive to depict the noisy world outside. As Ramendra’s family slept—lorries, cows, people and trees—everything was visible. The room had become a pin-hole camera.

The afternoon siesta was now all but forgotten, as Ramendra rushed to see if what he saw could be replicated on a smaller scale. He picked up his grandmother’s white coloured cough syrup box and a safety pin from his mother. He punched one small hole on one side of the box for the light to be able to enter and made a larger hole on top to see inside the box. Lo and behold, he could see the trees, people, lorries and cows inside this tiny camera.

“Years later, when I was in Class VIII or IX, I studied what a pin-hole camera was. That’s when I realised what I had made,” Dr Ramendra Lal Mukherjee, now 59, recalls.

Dr Mukherjee lives in Howrah with his wife and son and is known as a “serial inventor”, with over 30 internationally patented inventions to his name so far. Some of these include a lie detector, a stone analyser, an electronic ENT scope, a transmission electronic microscope, and a portable auto scope for ear inspection.

His most notable invention, perhaps, has been the micro microscope, which he made in 1998. For this, he was awarded the National Award on Technology Day by the Government of India in 2002. The invention has also been accepted and recognised by the World Intellectual Property Organisation in Geneva, Switzerland.

A different ‘magnified’ perspective

The story of this micro microscope dates back to the year 1975, Dr Mukherjee says. “Around the time I was in Class IX, my brother gifted me two lenses. I was reading a newspaper and playing around with the lenses one day, and noticed how the letters were enlarged in a particular position,” he tells The Better India.

The first version of this microscope was made using a 400g can of Cuty Talcum powder, the two lenses, a wooden block, and a switchboard, among other items that he took from various corners of his home. Under this “microscope”, Dr Mukherjee noticed a mosquito, and how clearly the insect’s blood vessels were visible. With this new invention, he approached his biology teacher, who was intrigued. A group of students and professors arrived at his home to see the invention for themselves. Dr Mukherjee was told that he had just made a compound microscope. “Mind you, I’d never seen a microscope up close before. I studied in a Bengali-medium school, and had not seen an instrument like that there,” he says.

“My research and work began from that day onwards,” Dr Mukherjee says. All through his years as a student of engineering, and in his subsequent jobs, he worked on modifying and building on the microscope. He adds, “I wanted to build a microscope that could magnify to the same level as a compound one [which magnifies up to 100 times].”

‘Scientists did not believe my invention’

In 1985, Dr Mukherjee started working at HCL. Through the years, he was promoted to senior positions, but found himself increasingly pressed for time. “I was not able to find much time to dedicate to my research and building the microscope. I’d only return home around 11 pm, and start the next day around 7 am. I decided to quit my job in 1997 so I could dedicate all my time to this microscope,” he says. Around this time, about 90% of Dr Mukherjee’s work on the micro microscope was completed. And he wrapped up his project by 1998.

The invention went live the same year, for which Dr Mukherjee received his patent, and recognition across Indian newspapers. Around 50,000 micro microscopes have been sold within India and abroad. The unit is pocket-sized, suitable for field study, used by any student from Class II onwards, and can last up to one year with daily usage of an hour. Dr Mukherjee also works with various NGOs and in teacher training workshops to demonstrate his inventions. “The process of inventing and filing for even one patent is very expensive. I used all my earnings from this invention to further my other ones,” he says.

Alongside, Dr Mukherjee had been working on other instruments. One of these was a portable ECG machine. During his posting in Chandigarh, Dr Mukherjee was encouraged by his general manager to work on his research after office hours. “At that time, these machines were bigger than a fridge. My idea was to replicate this on a smaller scale,” he says. More recently, at the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, Dr Mukherjee says he designed a smartphone-sized UV steriliser that can sanitise any item within a fraction of a second. A bigger version of this instrument is being used by Birla planetarium and cinema halls for sanitisation.

In 2010, Dr Mukherjee made a microscope that he claimed could perform the functions of all microscopes. This meant that the device could act as a transmission microscope, scanning microscope, polariser microscope, metallurgy microscope, among others. He applied for a patent for the device that year, and dismantled the prototype, because some components needed to be used for other inventions he was working on. But his patent was stalled. “My research paper had travelled across countries, and scientists did not believe the microscope could actually do what I was claiming,” he says.

In 2020, the Controller of Intellectual Property Office, headquartered in Kolkata, wrote to Dr Mukherjee, asking him to demonstrate the instrument within seven days. “I was trapped, because I’d dismantled the prototype long ago. Besides, I had to ensure that the prototype I would send them was the exact same as what I had mentioned in the patent. Everything down to the size and shape had to be the same,” he says.

‘It is a part of who I am’

With his reputation as a serial inventor under threat, Dr Mukherjee got down to seven days of rigorous work. The prototype was ready. He marched to the patent office with the model, and demonstrated the microscope’s functions. Within two days, he had his patent certificate in hand.

In November 2019, he received a call from the Government of India’s Environmental Science department, with a request that he should build microscopes that could detect microplastics in water for an expedition in Antarctica. The catch was that the instrument had to be ready in three weeks. “It seemed near impossible, of course, but I made the instrument within two weeks,” he says.

“But the challenges surrounding this job keep me going,” he says. “I work hard to make the impossible, possible, no matter how daunting it seems. I’m always working on my inventions. I dream of new inventions when I’m asleep. I conduct my research both before and after office hours. I’m always thinking of what comes next.”

He recalls the time he quit his job at HCL. His son was only a-year-and-a-half old at the time. “Working on these inventions has been a big part of who I am, ever since I was little. To be able to continue that in my adulthood would not have been possible without my wife Vaishali’s support. That’s the only reason I have been able to do all of this. My family has also been extremely supportive,” he says. In 2019, Dr Mukherjee was awarded the Personality of the Year award for his dedicated work in his field. He counts his biggest achievement as the all-in-one microscope, which he fought a decade-long battle for it to be recognised.

Dr Mukherjee’s inventions, along with their specifications and usage, can be found here.

Edited by Yoshita Rao