The Report - North 24 Parganas

13. BISHNU SARDARNREGA has been effective in reducing labour migrationBishnu Sardar is 48 years old. He and his wife, Bidyarani Sardar has five children, 3boys and 2 daughters. His Elder son and daughter are not living with themanymore – they have found work for themselves outside home. Bishnu himselfworks as a shunter outside the village. There is very little work in the village andhence he has to find work outside. In his profession, he earns about one hundredten rupees per day. “I have been able to return home only after three months.After taking care of my own living expenses, I have been able to save about fourto five thousand rupees only for household expenses.”Bishnu’s fondest memories are about his childhood when his parents took care ofthe family and his father had ample earnings for proper food and livelihood forhis children. Now he thinks that times have changed and he has not been ableto provide the same quality of life to his own children as providing proper foodand education have been his major concerns he states. With some additionalincome, he hopes to provide the basic opportunities of education to his children(with books and schooling etc.).Even with the aid of the job card, he thinks that these facilities might be hard toafford. “With 100 days of work that is not certain, it is difficult to plan. We still haveto leave our place of stay and find work elsewhere. Even when I and my wifeboth work on the fields and earn money, it is hard to manage expenses.”Most of the household responsibilities are taken care of by Bidyarani Sardar whenBishnu is away. She takes care of the fish rearing and cultivation and even whenthere is a family health situation that needs to be resolved.The only piece of land that Bishnu has is the one on which his house stands. It isabout a bigha and about eight kathas of it have been utilised for pondexcavation. Fish rearing in the pond yields about Rs. 30 to 50 per day asearnings, Bishnu says. Initially the pond was completely unusable due toexcessive sedimentation. “The panchayat committee decided to re-excavatethe pond. Thereafter, only according to my meagre means I have been able tobuy small amounts of fingerlings that are worth Rs. 10 and Rs. 20 for fish rearing.”Some of the earnings from fish rearing have been utilised in household expensesand others in covering for the cost of investment in fingerlings. The pond has alsobeen useful for cultivation of vegetables in the adjacent land around his house.Bishnu thinks that he can use the fishes in the upcoming year for planning feastsduring his daughter’s marriage that would entail atleast Rs. 50000 in expenses.