The Report - North 24 Parganas

7. SUBHADRA SARDARNREGA has offered employment to farmers who had no alternativesources of income other than cultivationSubhadra Sardar, wife of late Ganesh Sardar is a fifty nine year old housewifeand lives with her son and his family and her daughter who has two children.They are a six member family. Though Subhadra has a job card to her name, sheis unable to work at this age and her son works in her stead. Her husband passedaway twelve or thirteen years ago and her son has to go and work in Kolkata.She has another son but he does not live with his mother. The son who is inKolkata works as a mason and sends some money home but that is not enoughto run the family. “We sometimes have to go empty stomach,” says Subhadraand adds, “We work in other people’s houses to earn some money.” She alsocatches some ‘pin bagda’ which she sells to some businessmen who come tothe house to buy them. She gets maximum 50 paise per shrimp. Subhadra saysthat she is able to catch about twenty to fifty ‘pin’s per catch dependingwhether it is high or low tide. Maximum fish is caught during full moons ormoonless days and that too if she remains in the water for three to four hours. “Itis not enough to get two kilos of rice with that money,” says Subhadra. “We wereliving more or less comfortably when my husband was alive but since his death,we are doing very poorly,” Subhadra regrets. She gets twenty rupees if she isable to work for half a day in other people’s houses whereas if a male does thesame work he would get double the payment. Subhadra would be given fiftyrupees for a whole day while a male would get more.Subhadra Sardar has seven or eight cocks and feeds them with whatever shegets from the house. She owns two and a half bighas of land. The house standsover one bigha while some cultivation is done on the rest. When her husbandwas alive the family used to have about five bighas of land but since his demise,they have had to give four bighas of the land in mortgage and only two bighasare left with the family. Subhadra regrets that they might lose the ownership asshe is not being able to pay the amount back. She needs to return the thirtythousand that she had taken against the land. “I had to borrow the money tocomplete my husband’s last rites and get my sons married,” she says and adds,“it has been seven or eight years now. I don’t know how to manage – whether toget our daily food with the money or get the land back.”When Subhadra had the four bighas, she used to cultivate rice, bitter gourd,ladies fingers etc. She has two cows which she must return once they havecalves and then she might keep the calves. Now the cows are giving milk andSubhodra sells the milk at twelve rupees a kilo. She has to feed the cows with hay