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

Several questions surround the identity of mythical King Chandraketu. Was he a valiant king who refused to accept Islam and in turn lost his kingdom? Or was he Sandrocottus, who was documented by ancient Greek explorer Megasthenes in his book Indika? Recent discoveries have leaned towards the latter, with new theories suggesting that while it has always been believed that Sandrocottus was the name Megasthenes used for Chandragupta Maurya, he was talking about his time spent in India with King Chandraketu. However, his historical presence remains ambiguous with several authorities believing he was entirely fictitious. No written records of such a king exists in Bengali medieval literature.

Chandraketugarh (Fort of Chandraketu) remains a lesser known chapter in history. Often called “the city that never existed”, it was once reportedly an important coastal hub in international trade, between 4th Century BCE and 12th Century CE. However, it has since been reduced to a barren mound, with the ruins having spent years being neglected. The archaeological site is over 2,500 years old, and is located near the Bidyadhari River, which is around 35 kilometres north east of Kolkata, in North 24 Parganas, near Berachampa and the Harua Road railhead.

A civilisation shrouded in mystery

Its discovery was chanced upon during construction which was undertaken on adjacent roads. In 1907, local resident Dr Tarak Nath Ghosh approached the local government with a request to look into this site. He also wrote to Albert Henry Longhurst, a British archaeologist and historian, and an official of the Archaeological Survey of India (ASI). However, Longhurst deemed the site “of no interest”, and the ruins lay forgotten for two years.

In 1909, historian Rakhaldas Banerji—years before he discovered the ruins of Harappa and Mohenjodaro—arrived at the site. He shared similar opinions as Longhurst that the structural remains were little to work upon. But what intrigued him were the artefacts that had been found thus far and presented to him. He published a preliminary report on his findings in Basumati, a Bengali monthly. Almost a decade later, K N Dikshit, then superintendent of the eastern circle of ASI, published a report on the ruins.

In 1955, through efforts taken by several historians and archaeologists, the Ashutosh Museum of Art, Calcutta University, decided to excavate the site. The excavation was carried out between 1955 and 1967 at Khana Mihirer Dhibi, a five-metre high mound at the northeast corner of Berachampa village. This led to the discovery of a giant post-Gupta temple complex, the findings of which proved the existence of a flourishing ancient civilisation which possibly spanned six periods from the pre-Maurya to the Pala dynasty. Then, in 2000, another excavation was undertaken but remained incomplete and its reports were unpublished.

The findings over the years include the aforementioned Khana Mihirer Dhibi, a sub-site which is said to be a structure belonging to the Gupta period, and is named after two notable figures in history. Khana is believed to be the daughter-in-law of astrologer and mathematician Varahamihira, and a notable medieval Bengali language poet and astrologer herself, somewhere between the 9th and 12th centuries CE. The mound discovered in Chandraketugarh had the names of Khana and Mihir (another name by which Varahamihira was known). Varahamihira was believed to be part of emperor Vikramaditya or Chandragupta II’s famed navaratna sabha. Legend goes that because Khana was such an accomplished astrologer that Varahamihira’s career was threatened because she surpassed his accuracy in predictions. The story ends with either Khana’s husband or father-in-law cutting off her tongue to silence her talent.

Other discoveries helped understand several phases, ranging from the Mauryan to the post-Gupta period. Findings included large-sized pots and chalcedony beads possibly dating back to Mauryan times. Semi-precious stones, copper coins, terracotta figurines, cosmetic sticks of bone and ivory, and a steatite casket. Chandraketugarh is the only early historic site that has yielded such a massive amount of terracotta through excavation, so far recorded in eastern India.

A wide variety of figurines, animals, toy-carts, erotic depictions, narrative plaques depicting sceneries of harvest, aquatic motifs, among others, have been unearthed. Some of these terracotta items date back to the Indus Valley Civilisation, and are a window into the ways of life of the people. The female figurines are adorned with intricate headdresses, earrings, pendants, and other accessories that show the stellar craftsmanship of the civilisation.

A victim of neglect

Some historians also identified Chandraketugarh as Gangaridai, one of the four places that Greek philosopher Ptolemy mentions in his work — Geographia. This may suggest that the site had links with Rome and other ancient civilisations, and was part of a wide network of metal trading. The coins unearthed in excavations are telling of this.

After the 2000 excavation, evidence of a 30-foot rectangular fort, dating back to somewhere between the Maurya and Gupta periods, was found. The team also found structural remains of a temple. When the site was abandoned in 2001, it was left vulnerable to several thefts. People have managed to include items unearthed in their collections, and over the years, several artefacts have made their way to international museums such as Musee Guimet in Paris, as well as Sotheby’s. The Metropolitan Museum of Art in the US displays unprovenanced antiquities from Chandraketugarh, as gifts received from arrested art dealer Subash Kapoor.

In 2016, All-India Trinamool Congress MP, Kakoli Ghosh Dastidar, raised the issue of Chandraketugarh’s neglect in Parliament and wrote to the Centre as well. “In a place called Chandraketugarh in Berachampa, which is within my constituency of Deganga…Maritime was carried out with Europe 2,000 years ago. Seals, terracotta figurines recovered are getting lost…Mamata Banerjee had formed the Heritage Commission and excavation had started under the Archaeological Survey of India. We were expecting it to become a United Nations heritage site, but the excavation stopped. I draw your notice…and through you, the Hon’ble Minister of Culture, so that this place of heritage should find its place of prominence within our country,” the MP said.

Finally, in 2017, it was announced that a museum would be made to store the findings of Chandraketugarh. Art collector Dilip Maite donated 524 artefacts from his collection to the government for this museum, and their estimated value is around Rs 300 crore ($41 million).

Chandraketugarh finds itself mentioned more in newspapers and the media for these thefts and illegal activities than it ever has in the pages of history. A report by Sahapedia cites several reasons for its neglect. One is the larger problem of archaeological research in India, particularly that of coastal sites. Elements of coastal life are largely different from land-bound areas, right down to the geography. Moreover, owing to the volatile nature of these coasts, where places are often submerged and destroyed, these sites are even more difficult to excavate.

Another reason is the lack of textual or epigraphic material. Sources that mention Gangaridai do not point to a specific location where Chandraketugarh could have been located. No inscriptions with specific names of a place, king, or kingdom have been found either. And the legends surrounding the true identity of King Chandraketu only add to the mystery.

A detailed list of the artefacts uncovered in Chandraketugarh can be found here.

The hills of Darjeeling, Kurseong and Kalimpong have so much more to offer beyond their tea and tourism. That’s what 30-year-old Snjog Datta—a former journalist, political consultant and native of Kurseong town in Darjeeling district—felt while browsing through different e-commerce platforms looking for products from home two years ago. But working in different cities, the only product from home he could consistently find on these platforms was tea.

However, that’s not the only reason why he started Daammee, a small business venture which sources a variety of different products from cottage industries situated in the hills of Darjeeling and Siliguri and offers them to customers all over India on their online platform.

“Soon after the lockdown was announced last year, I started getting feelers that cottage industries in the hills were facing serious economic duress. Some families from the more remote parts had nothing on their plates. I began thinking about how we could give them a pan-India platform that would allow their goods to access a bigger market. We discussed this idea with some manufacturers and producers,” says Snjog, speaking to The Better India.

Established amid the COVID-19 pandemic, on 24 May 2020, the Nepali word ‘Daammee’ translates to ‘the best’. Assisting him in this new business endeavour is his mother Rachana Dutta, a former teacher.

A Taste of the Hills

For Snjog, a product of St Xaviers College in Kolkata, starting a business amidst a pandemic had its share of significant challenges.

“Figuring out the logistics was certainly the most challenging part, especially because we were catering to clients all over India. Of course, as a bootstrapped venture, we didn’t have a huge budget to market ourselves. Admittedly, there were some supply chain issues as well and following some customer feedback, we sorted most of them along the way,” he says.

So, what does Daammee offer customers?

“We are offering a whole range of products from the hills, from food to prayer objects, decor and Nepali cultural wear. The list grows every week. Among a wide variety of food items we offer — Dalle (the famous round chilly), Chinese sausage (lap cheong), gundruk (a fermented leafy green vegetable and a popular food in Nepal), smoked pork, mutton pickle, axone (kinema), chhurpi cheese (traditional cheese consumed in the Himalayan region), thukpa and glass noodles. Our most in-demand products are meat pickles, Kalimpong Noodles, Titaura (popular Nepali snack) and Chhurpi. We source them primarily from Kalimpong, Darjeeling and Kurseong but ship them to different cities,” he says..

Their focus lies predominantly on the cottage industries of this region.

“We buy them straight from the manufacturer and bring it to our warehouse where it goes through a strict quality check. Following this, we pack and ship these products all over India. Apart from the products, our packaging is one of our most appreciated facets. We ship 90% of our items all over India. The cold-cuts we home deliver in Kolkata and Siliguri only for the time being. Our biggest market is definitely the metro cities,” he claims.

Reminding customers of home

For Snjog, the transition from journalist to political consultant and now an entrepreneur has been quite seamless. He believes that little has changed for him. As a journalist, he would earlier run after stories. Today, he’s chasing down different suppliers to expand his company’s product base. With just a 12-member team running this venture now, it’s hands-on-deck for everybody involved.

“But what brings us satisfaction is the fact that our customers bring smiles on the faces of those families who reside in remote areas of Darjeeling, Kalimpong and Kurseong. Maybe these people have not been able to visit Chennai or Bengaluru or Mumbai but their products have reached more than a thousand households in these cities,” says Snjog.

Viraf Patel, a Mumbai-based chef, had this to say about his experience on Daammee in a December 2020 Facebook post: “For the longest time we’ve had the privilege of visiting family and friends who brought us Dalle and other lovely Nepali things, but this lockdown has been a game changer! I chanced upon daammee.in through a good friend from Nepal…while things took a longer route (due to COVID-19 protocol) they arrived this afternoon in great condition! Each individually packed and secured with cardboard as well as bubble wrap!”

Going through reviews on Daammee’s Facebook page, another facet that stands out is how products available on the platform reminds many of home. Anuradha Pradhan Thapa, another Daammee customer, has this to say, “I ordered dry buff pickle and it’s yum. The crunchiness, the taste and I felt like I was back in my hometown after having this.”

In a very short time frame, Daammee has made quite a name for itself in Siliguri, Darjeeling and Kalimpong. What does Snjog attribute this to?

“I think our customer-first approach has contributed to most of it. Our main client base is from the metro cities where such items are not available. Also, almost all our products undergo a thorough quality check. Our suppliers have been very supportive from the start. Having said that, I must admit that there have been minor lapses here and there with certain orders, but we have been continuously evolving and upgrading to quite literally make things Daammee, for our valued customers,” he says.

And business is good. “Our sales have crossed the Rs 20 lakh-mark. Although this figure sounds rather big for a company that has barely been operational for 10 months, less than 3% has gone into our coffers as profits. When it comes to the cold cuts, we were initially delivering them only in Siliguri. We have expanded to Kolkata since this month, where we deliver items within 24 to 48 hours of the order placed. We have our eyes on other states as well, and are continuously looking for like-minded partners,” he concludes.

(Edited by Yoshita Rao)

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Pune-based Amruta Patil recalls how her pre-examination ritual involved her making a trip to the stationery shop to buy a pencil, eraser, a black ball pen and a set of five gel pens. These gel pens would help her get through her entire semester examination for attempting the seven subjects in her Business Administration degree. She says she diligently followed this ritual through all three years of her graduation.

“The gel pen had a good grip, enabled smooth writing, lasted long enough for the examination, and was pocket-friendly. The brand never changed, as it was the cheapest gel pen available compared to others in the market. I felt less guilty if I lost one,” Amruta, who graduated college in 2010, says.

This pen was the Linc Ocean gel pen.

Like for Amrita, this pen is the preferred choice for many students across India, due to its high-quality ink and minimal pricing — one pen costs only Rs 5. Nearly five million Ocean gel pens are sold across India every month, making it one of the best selling pens in the company’s history.

The right pen to script success with

Linc helped disrupt the gel pen market and reach both urban and rural pockets of the country. “The pen was launched in 2003, and continues to be sold at the same price. The reason it could penetrate the market deeply was the cost factor,” says Deepak Jalan, managing director of Linc Pen & Plastics Ltd.

With over 50 varieties of pens, the Kolkata-based company, which started in 1976, clocks an annual turnover of about Rs 400 crore.

Speaking with The Better India, Deepak says, “It was not the first gel pen in the Indian market. But earlier entrants and their competitors were selling their products at a price that was five times higher. The companies that dominated the gel pen market offered them at Rs 20-25. This was unaffordable for many students, and mothers found it difficult to pay a high cost for a product whose refill lasted shorter than the ball pen.”

The gel pen market was growing because of its unique qualities, Deepak says.

“The gel pen was launched around 1996-97 in the country. It had an edge over fountain and ballpoint pens. In India, students have always shifted from using pencils to pens when they progress to secondary classes. Even back then, using fountain pens was messy and inconvenient, because they would often leak and were made of poor quality. However, these pens used water-based ink, which provides more control while writing. Meanwhile, ballpoint pens were not preferred by mothers because they affected the handwriting. However, they had good tips. So gel pens offer the best of both worlds, because their tip is like that of a ballpoint pen, and the refill contains water-based ink.”

Hence, the company decided to offer an affordable gel pen. “Like other companies in the field, we used Japanese ink, but built a good quality tip and engineered a low-cost solution for the body. The move helped bring the costs down, whilst maintaining the writing quality,” Deepak says.

Deepak says that mothers and students usually bought the pens in sets of five or ten. “By buying these pens in sets, the overall costs were reduced to 50%. Hence, it became the much-preferred pen in urban and rural areas,” he says.

Interestingly, the company had launched its first gel pen called Hi-School gel pen in 2001 and priced it at Rs 10. “It became an instant hit. It was still the cheapest in the market. But the Ocean gel pen overtook the sales of its predecessor,” Deepak chuckles.

‘King Khan’s choice of pen’

Deepak says that innovating the product and making high-quality pens has been the forte of the company, which was started by his father Suraj Mal Jalan.

“My father launched the company in 1976. He moved from Rajasthan to Kolkata in the 1960s to pursue higher studies. He faced the difficulty of non-affordability while buying good quality pens during his academic life,” he explains.

Deepak says that using fountain pens in those days was a messy affair as the ink would spill and required regular maintenance. “Then came the ballpoint pens, which cost Rs 10, which was expensive for students at the time,” he adds.

Deepak says back then, the R&D in the pen manufacturing industry in India was poor. “My father took help from two friends from the industry and invested a few thousand rupees, and imported the ink from Germany, and the tip from Switzerland. He set up the company to manufacture ball pens at Rs 2,” he adds.

The business gradually expanded and established a stronghold in West Bengal and North East India. The company went public in 1995. In the same decade, the company also started exporting to South East Asian countries and other parts of the world including the Middle East, Africa and USA.

But Deepak says that entering the gel pen market helped widen its market beyond Eastern India. “The two back-to-back gel pen launches helped reach Tier I, II and III cities. The pen manufacturing industry is very fragile and vulnerable. Hence, it was a big achievement,” he adds.

He explains that pens usually look similar and have almost the same built quality. “The brand does not matter to the customers unless the pen stands out, which is rare. Products such as Reynolds 045 has been able to achieve that for decades now,” Deepak says.

He adds that each company launches multiple pens each year. “We release about three products each year. It is to create novelty in the market and offer varieties for the young generation who prefer trying new items. Thus, the competition becomes tough,” Deepak says.

The company also roped in Bollywood celebrity Shah Rukh Khan in 2008 to endorse the gel pens. “It helped the product earn a distinct identity and become popular. Since then, it has established itself among generations of school students, and has been their preferred choice,” he says.

Apart from the two gel pens, Pentonic, Glycer and Glitter are other varieties that earn a majority of the revenue for the company. The cost of the pens ranges between Rs 5 and 20.

In 2012, Japan’s Mitsubishi Pencil picked up a 13% stake in Linc.

How Covid changed the game

Providing insights into the changing dynamics of the industry, Deepak says many technological advancements have taken place. “The pen introduced at Rs 5 or Rs 10, ten years ago, enjoys the same pricing even today. This is because we adopted more technology in the business. For example, earlier, the assembly of pens was done manually. But now the automated machines achieve the task, reducing production costs,” he adds.

Deepak says the quality of ink has also improved. “Earlier, the ink of ballpoint pens ran dry if they remained unused for a year. But now, the inks last for two years or more. The level of smoothness and quality of products has also improved,” he adds.

Besides struggling to create an identity in the market through different products, as well as improving quality, Deepak says the company was also impacted by the COVID-19 crisis. “The lockdown forced educational institutes to shut overnight. Students switched to tablets and cell phones, and they also stopped losing pens. The consumption dropped to almost 40%. The company faced a big question. How do we sell products with stationery shops closed?”

Deepak adds that the company found a solution and targeted non-stationary shops including medical stores, paan kiosks, supermarkets, and grocery stores. “Customers buy out of impulse at such places, and we successfully collaborated with 50,000 shops in India. We employed 300 people for telemarketing to coordinate with the orders and increase sales. It helped us avoid risks and ensured the safety of the sales team by having them work off field,” he says.

Deepak says plans are underway to bring sustainability into the pen manufacturing process. “The business relies on using plastic, and the ‘use and throw’ culture has aggravated pollution issues. Hence, the company introduced refillable pens. The product range, Pentonic, involving three pens, launched in 2018. This aims to promote sustainable values and culture, as well as encourage the user to buy more refills and reuse the body,” he adds.

Edited by Divya Sethu

Did you know that the refreshing watermelon has a dozen varieties? There are about 10-12 major watermelon varieties available in the markets, including Red Candy — a hybrid variety, Sugar Queen, Sugar Baby, Sagar, Sonalika, Red Chef, etc, with the seedless variety being high in demand.

Red Candy is just one of the kinds grown by 20 farmers at Balagarh Block in West Bengal’s Hooghly district. What’s special about this variety, you ask? They’ve been grown using the ‘poly mulching’ technique for the first time.

The 20 agriculturalists belong to Moraghata and Milangarh village at Bakulia-Dhobapara Gram Panchayat under Balagarh block and expect to yield around 460 quintals or 12,500 watermelons from their respective 20-bigha (about 4 acres) of land.

Under the ATMA (Agriculture Technology Management Agency) scheme, watermelon cultivation with poly mulching method was initiated at Balagarh Block on 15 February 2021.

The farmers of these two villages invested Rs 25,000 per bigha (¼th acre) to cultivate watermelons by applying this technology. Each farmer has harvested around 23 quintals of watermelon in one bigha of land. Their trial formula proved fruitful. They expect to garner a profit of around Rs 50,000 from growing this fruit using the poly mulching technique being provided by the State Agriculture Department.

Sanjay Samaddar, a farmer, says, “We faced few initial challenges while growing watermelons using this technique. For instance, we didn’t know the right measure of water to be sprayed. Plants used to get infected with insecticides. Besides, ‘downy mildew’ is one of the major diseases detected that spoils watermelon plants.”

So what makes this technique successful?

Assistant Director of Agriculture in the department in West Bengal, Dr Somnath Pal tells The Better India, “Agriculture is all about soil and water. But here, water scarcity is a natural phenomenon during the summers. Cultivation hazards include evaporation, leaching and wastage of water.”

He further explains, “So, we experimented with various processes, including poly mulching, which proved most fruitful. poly mulching is about covering the soil with biodegradable polythene sheets, where the seasonal fruit, watermelon, is grown. It’s noticed that 90 per cent of water either evaporates or disappears by leaching or gets wasted. But this technique, which is a recognised scientific method, conserves water.”

Watermelon is a vine plant, the root of which requires limited soil. Its root can grow 6-inches beneath the soil or on the upper part of the soil. It’s important to make sure the water level remains constant within the six inch layer of the soil so that the plant can draw water from this zone. The seed absorbs the least amount of water when planted and the mulching method helps the plant get the required amount of water.

According to Dr Pal, after the soil is prepared, it is covered with the mulching material. The plants are seeded at a gap of one hand’s distance. A cavity is made on the poly sheets to water the plant. This method decreases the rate of water evaporation. Up to 15 times more water can be conserved.

A soil-friendly, water-conserving method

In the conventional method of farming watermelons, the land needs to be watered for three hours. While in the poly mulching method, it requires only an hour’s worth of water supply. Experts say, this saves around 60 per cent of water as compared to the regular method of farming.

Secondly, the existing moisture in the soil is retained and barely evaporates. The third pro of using the poly mulching is that the baby plant can be protected from the direct penetration of sunlight, and the chances of growing weeds become immaterial. Moreover, the growth of weeds can be controlled.

Sanjay acknowledged that poly mulching is a sustainable agricultural technique for the future. The biodegradable polythene is available in the market. Priced between Rs 2,500 and Rs 3,000 per reel, it weighs 11 kilos and can cover 10-katha (half-bigha) of land.

“Watermelon is a cash crop which is now grown here in place of paddy in the summers. The poly mulching process helps keep the moisture level of the soil intact, which would otherwise dry up due to the soaring temperatures. This also helps enhance the root binding capacity by which the soil erosion can be prevented,” he adds.

From seedling to harvesting, the cultivation period is between 15 February and 30 April, which can be extended till 10 May. “Around 12,500 watermelons are expected to grow on per bigha of land. A full-grown fruit can weigh between 2kg and 4kg,” Debasish Samaddar, another farmer says.

“We are encouraging farmers to adopt those crops that can be cultivated in small quantities of water. The cultivators have dropped seeding Boro paddy because it demands massive quantities of water,” Dr Pal states.

Notably, the groundwater layer is depleting fast below the mark. The West Bengal Agriculture Department conducted a survey across several districts, including Hooghly district, in 2019-20 and found that the water level is depleting briskly. The situation at Hooghly and Burdwan districts is not alarming. But the Groundwater Level Survey conducted by the State Agriculture Department reveals that in the coming 50 years, these districts might face conditions of famine.

The data also exposes that agricultural land is sharply declining owing to societal development. Moreover, the scarcity of water, including potable water, is clearly visible.

“The deficiency is visible in the agricultural sector, too. The water quantity required for plants is insufficient. We need to take agriculture forward because it is the backbone of our economy,” states Dr Pal.

The State Agriculture Department is trying to spread this technique in the neighbouring district of Purulia and Bankura. Their aim is to generate awareness among the farmers, so that most of them can procure benefits through this method. The efficiency can be augmented if drip-irrigation is amalgamated with poly mulching technique. Every plant will receive equal water quantities. This combined concept will be proved productive in the future.

Meanwhile, the farmers have fixed selling prices at Rs 5-10 per kg, wholesale rates. The marketplace is within 3-km range in Guptipara , where buyers have already started bargaining for the fresh watermelon produce.

(Edited by Yoshita Rao)

It was the evening of 30 December 2020, when Khairul Sheikh, a daily wage labourer of Sahajadpur village in Murshidabad district of West Bengal, vehemently knocked on the door of Matiur Rahaman. Standing at the threshold, the middle-aged man with numbed eyes and a feeble voice requested Rahaman to bring back the dead body of his son from Saudi Arabia to India.

Khairul’s 28-year-old son Jurail Sheikh went to Saudi about 5 years ago as a sweeper on a monthly salary of Riyal 700. He died due to prolonged illness at Al Munawwarah in Medina, on 23 December.

“We received the sad news on 24 December. To bring the mortal remains back from Riyadh, we ran from pillar to post of the district civil administration departments for a week but all our efforts turned futile and frustration began to creep in,” says his maternal uncle, Nesful Sheikh.

It was then that someone from the neighbouring village informed them about Rahaman — the only person in Murshidabad district who knows the procedure to bring back corpses from any country.

Being a resident of Berhampore, Rahaman (45) is a social activist who has been bringing back dead bodies from abroad. He has also liberated many labourers, who got stuck either in overseas jails or detention camps since 2017. This man does it all for free of cost.

To bring back mortal remains from abroad

Rahaman requested photocopies of Jurail’s passport, Aadhar Card and an authorisation letter to proceed on behalf of Khairul. “Having received those documents on 10 November 2020, I immediately registered a complaint at the Government of India website — Madad, for the people who are in trouble abroad and received a docket number,” says Rahaman.

Subsequently, the docket number was tweeted to the Ministry of External Affairs (MEA). A message was received within an hour from MEA stating that the facts would be verified. “My responsibility is to maintain constant track over the grievances registered and communicate with either MEA or the Indian Embassy in Saudi Arabia through emails or tweets,” reveals Rahaman, who is the founder and chief functionary of Karna-Subarna Welfare Society, established on 24 November 2006.

Transportation of corpses is a tough task. The High Commission of India in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, moves only after receiving a copy of ‘Power of Attorney’ from the relative of the deceased. “Every detail of the person is furnished on a Non-Judicial Stamp Paper before mailing it to the respective embassy,” informs the social activist.

Talking to The Better India, Rahaman says that the Indian Embassy established contact with the company where Jurail worked and requested them to produce relevant documents for transportation such as Death Report from the Ministry of Health, Saudi Arabia, Certificate of Death Ministry Non-Saudi Civil Affairs Department and Police Report (Saudi Arabia).

Thereafter, the Embassy issued a ‘No Objection Certificate’ to the company for further proceeding. The company then arranged the following documents needed for transportation such as Embalming Certificate, Forensic Medicine of Ministry of Health of Saudi Arabia, NOC from APHO (Airport Health Organisation), Delhi, Cancellation of Passport of Deceased, Certificate of Entry of Death of an Indian National and Air Ticket.

“Managing these documents is time-consuming. It may take a week or may extend to six months because of several reasons, including deliberate delay by the company. The total expenditure is borne by the Government of India; however, the government claims this amount from the company. If the deceased person is buried abroad then the ‘Burying Permit from Embassy’ is mandatory, informs Rahaman.

Finally, Jurail’s mortal remains arrived at IGI Airport, New Delhi instead of NSCBI Airport Kolkata on 12 February. The Saudi Police informed relatives about the transportation in Arabic, which they couldn’t decipher.

“The family immediately called me up to seek my service. I contacted the officials at Delhi Airport to confirm that the coffin would be shortly picked. Flight tickets for two were booked. The poor family borrowed Rs 1.5 lakh to bring the coffin,” Rahaman says.

Until the coffin reached the village Sahajadpur and was buried, Rahaman’s job wasn’t over. Transporting the coffin from Kolkata Airport to Berhampore, a distance of about 181-km one way, was another challenge. At his request, the Chief Medical Officer of Health (CMOH), Murshidabad sanctioned a free ambulance service for the cause. Eventually, the coffin reached and Jurail was laid to rest in peace.

Working for the unaccounted

Born in an agriculturist family, Rahaman is the eldest among three siblings. He did his schooling at Madhupur Raja Sashanka Vidyapith. He passed his Class 10 in 1994. He couldn’t continue his education between 1994 and 1998 due to financial problems, but he finished his Class 12 and Graduation from Berhampore College with commerce stream in 1998 and 2001, respectively.

It was in 2001 that he moved to Kolkata to pursue Chartered Accountancy, but again he failed to manage the expenditure. He returned to Murshidabad in 2005 and joined an NGO Suprava Panchashila Mahila Uddyog Samity as an accountant. But he quit after working for less than a year.

He joined the Society for Community Intervention and Research, where he continued working for two years before quitting. Meanwhile, he began working for his own NGO – Karna-Subarna Welfare Society that he launched in 2006. His primary objective was to get mental satisfaction by serving the people without expecting benefits. He said that around 2 lakh people from Murshidabad district itself are out of the country and the government doesn’t have any data about them.

In his line of work, Rahaman undergoes tremendous mental pressure.

He started his humanitarian service on 7 September 2017 when his maternal uncle’s son-in-law, Asatulla Sheikh was struck by lightning in Malaysia, who went to work as a gardener in 2013. He learnt about Asatulla’s demise from his father and maternal uncle, who wanted to bring the corpse from Malaysia.

“I didn’t know the process to bring back a dead body. I had no idea how to handle tweeters and never heard about Madad in those days,” admits Rahaman.

He then wrote an email to the Murshidabad District Magistrate and got no reply. Sought local police help, who ignored his plea and admitted to not knowing the procedure. He then spoke to local journalists, who also didn’t have a clue. He dashed off a letter to the Chief Minister but to no avail.

“I mustered up the courage and sent my first tweet to the then Minister of External Affairs, (late) Sushma Swaraj on 9 September 2017 and instantly received a call from MEA seeking information. The very next moment, I got another call from the High Commission in Malaysia. They sent me the ‘madad link’ and asked me to stay connected with MEA,” Rahaman says.

According to him, within an hour the High Commission of India, Malaysia rang again and informed him that the body was located at Batu Anam in Johor area about 140-km away from Kuala Lumpur. “Within a week, the dead body was sent to Kolkata on September 13. It was brought to Berhampore from Kolkata Airport for burial on the next day,” Rahaman says.

In yet another case of an Indian boy who went missing abroad, Najemul Sheikh (28), a resident of village Mahalandi in Kandi, Murshidabad district, went to Malaysia with the help of an agent on 24 January 2020. He was told that the company hired him for a packaging job at the salary of 60 Malaysian Ringgit per month. But he landed up cutting green coconut.

However, he was in touch with his family till March 2020, thereafter, the communication was truncated for around nine months. He escaped from his workplace but was then caught by the Malaysian police.

His father, Khudabaux Sheikh, along with his second wife, visited Rahaman in the first week of December 2020, stating that they didn’t have any idea whether their son was dead or alive.

Based on their information, Rahaman docketed the grievance on Madad on 15 December 2020. Soon the Pravasi Bharatiya Sahayata Kendra (PBSK), Kuala Lumpur Branch, sent him a message on WhatsApp stating that Najemul was alive and in a detention camp.

A week later, a letter from the High Commission in Malaysia was received on 22 December 2020. The letter read: ‘We have checked our record. Mr Najemul Sk is in Tekan Detention Camp. He is ready for repatriation. Kindly provide us with a Malaysian contact number, so that we will inform them to make payment for his Air ticket.’

The same letter was forwarded to DM, ADM and SP of Murshidabad on 29 December 2020 but there was no response from them. A reminder from MEA shook them and they picked the agent for questioning. The agent made a video call to his Malaysian counterpart. Subsequently, the name and number of the agent in Malaysia were passed to the High Commission.

Najemul was vaccinated for COVID-19 before he was repatriated to India on 23 March 2021. He was sent to a quarantine centre in New Delhi for six days and reached his village on 29 March 2021.

To date, 37 such people have already been brought back from Saudi Arabia, United Arab Emirates, Kuwait and Malaysia by Rahaman. Seven more people are about to be repatriated, including one from a Malaysian detention camp and six from Saudi Arabia, two of whom are in jail.

Rahaman facilitated bringing 10 dead bodies back to the country. He helped in the burial of seven bodies abroad. He managed to bring the body of Ajoy Mondal (48) to Bagnan in Howrah district, within 10 days who had died of acute renal failure in Dubai, UAE, in 2019.

He also rescued 14 Indian sailors, who were taken into custody by Yemini Coast Guard in February 2020, Heron Sheikh Siddiki from Murshidabad was one of them. They were sailing from Oman to Saudi Arabia and due to inclement weather they had to anchor their ship at Yemen port. These sailors were confined to a hotel in Sanaa, Yemen. They all have been repatriated to India via Dubai on 2 December.

“Mr Girish Pant, a PBSK, Dubai award-winner, escorted Mondal’s dead body from his expenses. On which, the noted playback singer Usha Uthup facilitated his lodging, ambulance fare from the airport to Bagnan and a vehicle for sightseeing,” discloses Rahaman.

“He is the Samaritan of poor labourers. We are illiterate and know nothing about the paperwork. He does it on behalf of us for free,” says Khudabaux Sheikh.

Today, Rahaman is married with one son and is an auditor for a chartered accounting firm. He also earns from preparing audits, annual reports and conducting the renewal work for 40-50 NGOs.

With only one staff, Rahaman is relentlessly serving the underprivileged under his Karna-Subarna Welfare Society banner. He can be reached at 9434856496.

(Edited by Yoshita Rao)

Around 30 km from Darjeeling lies the verdant and organic 150-year-old Selim Hill Tea Garden, spread across 973 acres, of which approximately 450 acres come under tea bush cover. Owned by 23-year-old Sparsh Agarwal’s family since 1990, the Selim Hill Tea Garden is one of the 74 operational tea gardens in the region selling the world-famous Darjeeling Tea. However, like most tea gardens here, which are dependent on the international export market, Selim Hill was barely breaking even.

After the end of each year, Sparsh’s family, who are based out of Kolkata, would hope for some miracle in the export market to reverse the tea garden’s fortunes. When COVID-19 struck in March 2020, it broke the proverbial camel’s back. After all, the pandemic had destroyed their chances of exporting their first (spring) and second flush (summer). Flush refers to the period when tea plants grow new leaves that are harvested. The first two flushes generate the highest amount of revenue for tea gardens.

With options running out, Sparsh’s family in April 2020 considered selling the tea garden.

Meanwhile, Sparsh, a former student of political science and international relations at Ashoka University in Sonepat, Haryana, was working with the Centre for Policy Research, a Delhi-based think tank.

He was never interested in getting into the family business. But when he told his friends that his parents were thinking about selling their tea garden, something changed drastically.

“When I was in school and college, I would often bring my friends to Selim Hill during the holidays. They have fond memories of this place and the people here. When I told them of the family’s decision to sell Selim Hill, my friends asked whether they could come on board and help revive it. That’s when Ishaan Kanoria (24), an investment banker, and Anant Gupta, a graduate of the Tata Institute of Social Sciences (TISS), came on board. Given our memories associated with the area, we decided to give the revival process one last try,” recalls Sparsh, speaking to The Better India.

But it was difficult convincing his parents, who eventually agreed on one condition. Sparsh and his friends would have to dedicate all their energy towards reviving Selim Hill.

After agreeing to this proposition, Sparsh and Ishaan established Dorje Teas, a venture which seeks to radically change the way Darjeeling tea is marketed and sold. Under their unique subscription model, consumers need to pay just Rs 2,100 for an entire year’s supply of fresh and organic tea.

They built Dorje Teas under the mentorship of 74-year-old Rajah Banerjee, a legend in the Darjeeling tea business, former owner of the Makaibari Tea Estate in Kurseong and pioneer of the organic movement. “He is also an investor in the company, our brand ambassador and the elder statesman guiding us through the entire process,” Sparsh adds.

Meanwhile, under Rajah’s chairmanship, Sparsh and Anant have established the Selim Hill Collective, which seeks to “reimagine the space of the tea estate, by moving away from the model of a commercially exploited plantation to that of an inclusive and sustainable garden”.

Why the Darjeeling Tea industry suffers

From May to November 2020, Sparsh and Ishaan set out to understand the local tea business, why it was suffering, and formulate possible solutions to these issues. After speaking to Rajah, conducting their own research and visiting other tea gardens in the region, they figured out four major reasons why Darjeeling tea industry was suffering.

1) Climate change: The effects have been felt particularly over the course of the last decade with changing rainfall and wind patterns. The tea is produced over a period of about seven and a half months because that’s when Darjeeling gets her rains. However, Sparsh and Ishaan realised that this period of rainfall had shrunk to about five and a half months.

Further, as a result of climate change and factors related to it, the region is seeing irregular droughts and unnatural landslides. Other macro factors include greater prevalence of dams, which is leading to more seismological activity including earthquakes.

2) Beholden to the export market: Tea gardens here don’t focus on the domestic market. They also don’t market all four flushes as unique items.

“There has been a lot of inertia within the Darjeeling tea industry about how we market ourselves. We don’t focus on domestic sales and make it affordable for Indian customers. Many are stuck in their old ways. The Darjeeling tea industry needs to come out of this bubble and move forward. The many industry veterans we spoke to said that without centering on the export market, our tea garden would shut down. But we have been exporting for the past 30 years, and are still on the verge of collapse,” says Sparsh.

3) Archaic systems of management: Besides an anachronistic system of grading and sorting tea leaves for the export market, tea gardens continue to operate on a colonial hierarchical management style. Sparsh admits that past generations of his family have benefitted from this, but believes it’s not sustainable in the long run.

4) Cheaper Tea from Nepal: During the crippling 104-day strike in the region demanding a separate Gorkhaland state, many tea gardens lost a lot of their produce. To fill in the domestic demand, traders began importing cheaper tea from Nepal and took over a large chunk of the market. After all, half of the Darjeeling tea is consumed in India. To win back some of the market, Dorje Teas has embarked on a social media strategy showing consumers where exactly their produce is coming from. “You need to support local communities, otherwise this is going to collapse,” he adds.

Subscription model: Breaking the mould

This model hinges on seasonal harvests in spring (first flush), summer (second flush), monsoon (third flush) and autumn (flush). While the first and second flush get exported, the latter two are sold in India. The monsoon and autumn flush don’t fetch a higher price than their spring and summer counterparts because of how the Darjeeling tea industry operates.

“You have tea garden owners, managers and the larger associations that publicly say monsoon and autumn flush teas are of lower quality. Through our research, we found that all four have their unique taste, aroma, flavour and story. The monsoon flush tea, which gets the worst rap, is unique because it gives you a bold colour, smoky taste, and drinkers can actually add a drop of milk in it as well. Just imagine the uniqueness of a garden which can generate tea in the spring time which is so floral that you don’t even have to add sugar and months later produce tea in which you can add a drop of milk,” Sparsh explains.

Anyone can sell the first and second flush. That market already exists. The problem for tea gardens in Darjeeling is their inability to sell their autumn and monsoon flush. So, Ishaan and Sparsh decided to focus on selling the latter, and thus create a subscription model which allows consumers/patrons to book their annual supply of tea.

“Our promise is that we will deliver the freshest possible tea. As soon as you place the order, we roast the tea leaves, pack and send it to you. This way we are able to average out the prices. Monsoon and autumn flush prices are lower than their spring and summer counterparts. But the Indian customer is anyway not getting the first and second flush, which are exported. First flush teas are sold at anywhere between Rs 5,000 to Rs 10,000 per kg. In our model, if you book your annual subscription at Rs 2,100 per kg, you get 250 g each of the four flushes, including the monsoon flush, which we specially roast, in three-month intervals. After all, 250 g makes about 100 cups of tea,” he claims.

If customers want to drink more, they can always opt for getting these packets delivered every month. At 2,000 per kg for the entire year, this becomes a valuable proposition. Subscribers become supporters of the tea garden and acquire quality and organic farm fresh tea at their doorstep. Going further, Dorje Teas has created a tea community.

“We’ve created a Tea Club where, every Sunday, we send subscribers updates of what’s happening in the garden, blog posts, pictures of certain bird species that might have been spotted and organise speaker sessions called Echoes. If this model works for us (we need 50,000 customers in the first year), it can become a model for others,” he explains.

Another way in which Dorje Teas has broken away from conventional practices of the tea industry is by doing away with export-market oriented grading systems at their heritage factory. In the tea industry, leaves are typically divided into four grades – Whole Leaf, Broken Leaf, Fannings (deposited in tea bags), and Dust (also deposited in tea bags).

To establish these grades, tea gardens employ machines called breakers, which essentially use metal to cut down the tea leaves to different sizes. These leaves then go into different troughs, which end establishing the four grades of tea leaves, and are eventually packaged.

“Looking back at how estates in Darjeeling manufactured tea 40 years ago and undergoing an extensive tea tasting process from different gardens, we realised that we don’t need the breaking process. In fact, breaking reduces the quality of tea and leaves behind a metallic tinge. After the tea comes out of the drying oven, we perform a simple hand sorting process to remove some of the stem. There is no crushing or breaking. There is very little handling and that leaves us with the original taste of Darjeeling tea,” Sparsh notes.

Selim Hill Collective for the community

Established during the 150th year anniversary of tea garden last year, the purpose of the Collective is to “create a model for a more sustainable and just tea garden, where workers get their due, the biodiversity is preserved, and Selim Hill becomes the site of a cultural renaissance for Darjeeling,” notes a blog on the Dorje Teas website.

There are about 1,000 households in Selim Hill, of which 350 are directly associated with working on the tea garden. While Sparsh’s father helped set up a proper sanitation system for its residents, the Collective is looking to address the problem of overall waste management since the area does not have a proper municipality.

Currently, Dorje has launched a large-scale afforestation campaign at Selim Hill to help maintain soil cover and prevent landslides. They have already planted about 300 saplings in partnership with the local forest department. For every subscriber, Dorje will contribute to the Collective’s campaign to increase tree cover at the garden. Within wildlife conservation, they’ve also started doing a proper taxonomy of bird species in Selim Hill.

The Selim Hill Collective is based out of their Second Chance House at the garden, which offers space and opportunity for photographers, filmmakers, journalists, researchers, writers, wildlife enthusiasts and students to work with them. But these initiatives are in their infancy. The objective is to first revive the tea garden and make it commercially viable. The road ahead is long, but any attempt at reimagining a business and a space which has existed for decades will take time.

(You can visit the Dorje Teas website here and follow them on their Instagram page.)

(Edited by Divya Sethu)

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Around a decade ago, while doing his research in Nadia District on ‘Paleochannel Analysis’, a study about finding the rivers that existed nearly 2,000 years ago or more, a geography professor discovered historical traces of civilisation and trading that existed in India dating back to the 3rd century BCE.

Dr Biswajit Roy found numerous precious pieces of terracotta architectural residuals, relics of clay potteries, earthen lamps, bricks, beads, stone idols, metal idols, flower vase, ivory pendants, tiger teeth, broken utensils and indigenous amphora scattered all over the pockets of Debagram and Anulia Gram Panchayat areas, which is about 145-km away from Kolkata. Each new finding of amphora and its fragments bred his folkloric interest.

“These finest qualities of earthen jars made of alluvium soil with an oily layer coated inside were used for storing exquisite wine and oil. It might have been shipped to Rome and Greece from Bengal through the Mediterranean Sea using the Gangetic belt and its tributaries route,” informs Dr Roy, an Assistant Professor at Pijush Kanti Mukherjee Mahavidyalaya in Alipurduar district.

The 38-year-old tells The Better India, “We didn’t find any trace of indigenous amphora earlier in Bengal, except in the Nadia region and at Chandraketugarh in North 24-Pargana District. It dates back to the Maurya period (321-185 BCE), which is an evidence of culture and commerce. Unfortunately, it has not been documented. This is the first time that we are getting this authentic data covering the Debalgarh zone.”

Spreading across a 4-sq-km area, this region, including the nearby forest, has a huge quantity of treasures buried right beneath the surface. “The site has enough potential for excavation and it needs proper exploration,” admits Dr Shubha Majumder, Superintending Archeologist Kolkata Circle.

Dr Majumder says, “I haven’t seen these amphoras but they were found in the coastal part of Bengal. There is some evidence of amphora at hinterland sites but these are imitation types of amphora. We need to analyse whether they had originated in Bengal or they arrived from outside. The analysis of its texture and content is essential to establish the objects.”

He adds, “If they had arrived from the West, then we may ascertain it as an amphora or else we can say it is an imitation variety. In ancient times, the trade network was through the rivers, as River Churni was the main waterway. People might have used it for trading and other purposes.”

Notably, when Dr Roy first visited this area in 2012, he noticed several rivers and canals were dead. The villagers were unable to state its disappearance or the route it flowed. Few pieces of old boats were visible in some areas, which indicated the existence of ancient river routes but no one was aware of. “This comes under the ‘Geo-archeology’ subject, which is less-talked about here unlike in the West,” informs Dr Roy.

While digging up soil for construction work or burrowing the ponds, the villagers stumbled upon numerous materials hidden below. Some antiquities also surfaced after the heavy rain washed away the mound of soil.

According to him, civilisation and culture cannot be conserved without the support of local residents. So, he decided to raise awareness among the villagers and began visiting villages with few local students. He met various age-groups of people, interacted with them over a cup of tea and convinced them that wherever any person chances on such ancient artifacts they shouldn’t ignore them. “These are your heritage. Preserve it. It speaks volumes about the rich history of Nadia,” he says.

The initiative of preserving these historical relics took shape when the villagers joined an awareness campaign and made the other villagers see the importance of these vintage objects. The mass movement eventually facilitated them to come up with an idea of making a ‘village museum’.

The Debagram Museum was established by a group called Debagram Debalraja Puratattwa O Loksanskriti Sangha on the Rath Yatra Day in June 2017.

The museum was inaugurated with 20 items, and today, it has over 1,000 exclusive articles, including indigenous amphora from Mauryan Period (321-185 BCE), earthen pots from Kushan Period (30-375 AD), colourful beads from Gupta Period (3rd century – 543 CE), seals from early Pala Period (8-12 century) and silver coins from Sultanate Period (1206-1526 AD).

“This wouldn’t have been possible had Chitta Ranjan Biswas not offered a room on the ground floor,” says Dr Roy.

Retired from postal service in 2014, Biswas, a local resident turned to archaeology after having met Dr Roy in 2015. It was Biswas, who came forward to offer one of his 10×10 rooms for the cause while the discussion was ongoing for building a makeshift museum.

Noting this, the man who found the first relics during the joint search operation conducted by villagers, Adhish Halder, another heritage supporter showed his generosity. He donated two wooden showcases worth Rs 26,000 to shelf the artifacts. “I was the first to find a 4-inch earthen lamp. I was extremely excited to discover it on the edge of a pond,” Halder says.

But according to Biswas, some villagers aren’t that enthused at all. “We heard them saying that we earn crores of rupees from it. A beautiful idol was found by a villager but he sold it instead of giving it to us. One Vishnu idol is still resting at Gangnapur Police Station. When we asked for it, they refused to hand it over. We neither have political nor administrative power, so, we can’t force them to comply with us,” laments Biswas.

The collected artifacts are conserved for research and academic purposes. Many scholars and academicians from various Universities, archeologists, the Asiatic Society delegates and officials of the State Archeological Department visited this museum and appreciated their endeavour. Interestingly, the villagers didn’t excavate. They collected the items when things surfaced during construction work or hoeing ponds or mudslides after the rains.

Unfortunately, the ‘scientific excavation’ of this area hasn’t been conducted till date. The area isn’t declared a protected site despite the Debagram Debalraja Puratattwa O Loksanskriti Sangha informing the Archaeological Survey of India Kolkata Circle, Nadia District Administration, the Asiatic Society and the State Archeology Department.

Conservator, Directorate of Archeology and Museum, West Bengal, Dilip Duttagupta says, “We are aware of the fact that for the last many years several antiquities relics have been discovered. It proves that this region had an ancient civilisation. We don’t have any second opinion on that and even some historians and academicians have confirmed it.”

Asked about scientific excavation, Duttagupta says that the radius of Debalgarh region is wide. “A trial version of excavation is required to get the precise dates to determine when this civilisation existed? How long did it last? How did it get lost? So, for all these queries a thorough excavation is necessary, even if it is on a smaller scale,” admits Duttagupta. However, Dr Majumder says that excavation isn’t easy when residential structures already exist.

“A scientific excavation could have restored the lost history of a great civilisation from complete extinction,” concludes Dr Roy.

(Edited by Yoshita Rao)

Love is a pure emotion that makes you do things you never thought you were capable of. An anchor of hope, it can make you fearless, agrees Sumita Banerjee, who has risked it all for love.

A native of Durgapur, West Bengal, she moved to Kolkata for studies. Alone in a big city, she found solace amidst the canopied banks of Rabindra Sarovar and soon joined the community of morning walkers called Lake Lovers Forum, who were passionate about the well-being of the lake.

A few steps from Golpark More, the lake is a safe haven for people from all walks of life — those looking to snatch a few minutes of sleep under the trees, the elderly yearning for companionship or the hurried professionals striving to stay in shape.

“It was not just the natural bounty and beauty, but how it had cradled a diverse community of people behind its tall gates. It is almost magical to see the world go a tad bit slower in this green haven situated amid a concrete jungle. It is our treasure to cherish and protect,” says Sumita.

Since then, she has been fighting tooth and nail to protect the lake from various forces—industrial, political or religious—that have been trying to encroach and destroy its valuable diversity for personal gains. Having drained most of her savings and even dodging death threats, Sumita has grown to be the fearless guardianess of Rabindra Sarovar.

Becoming the sole protector

Born and raised in Durgapur, Sumita came to Kolkata in 1990. After completing her Masters of Arts in Bengali, she took up a teaching position in a city-based school. It was in 2001 when she first visited the Rabindra Sarovar.

The artificial man-made lake is situated at a prime location of Kolkata and is visited by over 10,000 people daily. Dug up on a marshy land in 1921, it is home to a diverse flora and fauna that houses several species of migratory and resident birds.

Spanning over 192 acres, out of which 73 acres is water, this lake is considered the second-largest water body in Kolkata. With more than 11,000 trees and a majority of them over 70 years old, it is an environmental reserve that balances the city’s urban ecology. Owing to this, in 1997, this lake which is also known as Dhakuria lake, was declared a ‘national lake’, under the National Lake Conservation Programme of the Ministry of Environment, Forest and Climate Change, Government of India.

Yet, despite all the official accolades meant to provide immunity to this national environmental reserve, it was left in tatters during Sumita’s first visit, which was anything but love at first sight.

“Back then, Rabindra Sarovar wasn’t what we see today. There was no one taking good care of it and it was on the verge of becoming a dumpyard. Hawkers had encroached pavements and walking trails were littered with garbage. In some parts, there was even open defecation by dogs and people. It was a very sorry state with a handful of morning walkers from nearby communities striving to keep it alive. I was no environmentalist or activist at the time but the blatant disregard for an environmental treasure like this was a huge shock for me. I knew the potential a space like this could have for city dwellers and its environmental implications and that was motivation enough to begin the fight,” she recalls.

However, it was a specific incident at the lake that triggered her unflinching motivation for the cause and gave her confidence to attempt such a mighty feat.

“The community of morning walkers was small but strong, always ready to help one another in moments of crisis. One such case came when a person with a disability, Argho, who frequented the lake, lost his father to an accident that left him and his mother utterly helpless. To help him out, the morning walkers community began to raise funds. Initially, they couldn’t gather enough funds to create a substantial impact,” she says.

“I, being a fairly new regular, decided to take up the cause and help as much as possible. Soon, from the Rs 2,000 collected initially, I managed to raise almost Rs 6 lakh in a matter of a week through crowdfunding. We then registered a bank account for the mother and son and deposited all the money in their name. That one success at mobilising people to create a substantial social impact gave me a sense of confidence that I could probably do more than just feel sorry about the state of affairs around me. That’s how I made rejuvenating and protecting the lake as my life’s mission,” says Sumita, who is now recognised as the sole citizen-conservationist and activist taking-on all disruptors or rule-breakers threatening to harm the lake and its natural bounty.

Countless fights and few triumphs

Every morning, Sumita walks around 2 kilometres from her home to reach the lake by 7-7.30 am. The rest of the day then passes by with her patrolling the lake area, stopping hawkers and citizens from littering, coordinating with government officials, managing cleaning and maintenance work, and much more. Although her usual day ends at around 3 pm when she walks back home, on some days the work can stretch beyond the late hours of the evening.

This has been her routine for the past two decades, as she relentlessly strives to protect the lake from any threat whatsoever.

“Some days are good and others can range from bad to worse. But the work has to go on,” shares Sumita, whose first task was to limit the hawkers from entering and littering on the premises of the lake.

On the advice of Tathagata Roy, former governor of Meghalaya, she collected more than 1,000 signatures from morning walkers to file a petition. The first win came in 2014 when the High Court issued an order restricting hawkers from conducting businesses inside the lake premises.

Simultaneously, her efforts had stopped the so-called beautification project of the lake launched in 2005-2006, which was adversely affecting the population of snails and frogs due to concretisation of the riparian zone- the bank where the soil meets the water.

The next big challenge was then to stop the annual dumping of religious ritual-related offerings into the water. From plastic and thermocol waste to dumping of at least 50 litres of oil, the adverse ecological impact on conducting Chhath Puja was massive, pushing for another petition to stop it.

In this fight against this tide, she found support from environmentalist Subhas Datta who had started the tirade against Chhath puja back in 2015. After their relentless efforts, the National Green Tribunal (NGT) on 15 November 2017 passed an order barring all social and religious activities inside the lake premises.

But, this was far from a win, as the following years witnessed Chhath puja devotees blatantly flouting the NGT ruling. In 2019, more than 15,000 devotees broke the locks on the gates of Rabindra Sarovar, played loud music, burst crackers, littered and ruined all the good work accomplished so far. According to a report, South Asian Forum for Environment (SAFE) found that the 2019 incident left 22.3 mg of oil and grease per litre into the lake water against the permissible limit of 10 mg per litre. Another report, claimed that the 50 lakh saplings planted in the lake area in 2018-19 were also destroyed by devotees during this debacle.

“Years of effort to rejuvenate a dying lake went into ruins in a single day. What’s worse is when the custodian of the lake, Kolkata Metropolitan Development Authority (KMDA), in 2020 decided to challenge the NGT ruling in the Supreme Court urging to lift the ban on Chhath puja,” adds Sumita.

To her relief, the plea was eventually shot down, ensuring that the ban prevailed.

“I remember I couldn’t eat or sleep during that time. The day when the SC ruling was to come, I almost had a nervous breakdown. My whole life now was dedicated to the protection of this lake and all of it was at stake. But fortunately, it was in our favour. Since then, from 2020 the KMDA has taken necessary steps to stop the devotees from entering the lake and I hope this continues. If people are observing Chhath Puja abroad without polluting their rivers, why can’t they do the same here? ” she says.

Fighting against the tide

For the last two decades, Sumita has single-handedly fought against corporate lobbies, politicians and religious outfits, often risking her life in the process.

“The fact of the matter is that the lake is located in a very prime location and everyone, from politicians to lobbyists, want to have a piece of it. It is a national lake and looking at it as real estate land is completely against the law but some people are trying to bend the law by every means possible, even if that involves threatening my life,” she says.

“In August 2018, for instance, a group of men tried to corner me. It was around noon, and they began threatening to kill me. When I did not show any sign of fear, they even poured petrol on me and threatened to burn me alive, and all this happened while the CCTV cameras were around. Finally, after some time the law enforcement bodies arrived to stop it. Despite them assaulting me, they were set free in just a day. Like this, several outfits have tried to threaten my life, and some have even filed fraud cases against me to pin me down but every effort to curb me only makes me stronger and I realise the gravity of my work,” shares Sumita, who has been fighting all the legal battles at her own expense.

“With the lake’s biodiversity at risk, we need a group of experts in lake rejuvenation to work in tandem with the government to create a substantial impact. Till then, I will continue to hold the fort down and protect this beloved lake with my life,” the changemaker concludes.

Edited by Yoshita Rao