The Report - North 24 Parganas

2. NAGENDRA SARDAR BHOUMIKNREGA has provided a boost to household incomeNagen Sardar is a fifty five year old farmer and does not remember since whenhis ancestors have been in this place. He was born and brought up here. Sardarsays that he has been unable to buy any land in his lifetime and owns the oneand a half bighas that he inherited from his father. Vegetables are grownthroughout the year. There are six members in the family – one son and threedaughters. The son has studied till class six and the daughters have not studied atall. Nagen says that he could not give his children an education due to theacute shortage of funds“We have lived here so long that we have had to face many natural clamities,”recalls Bala Sardar and adds, “we have seen the river change its course andmany cyclones as this is a cyclone prone area. The marks of the havoc causedby all this can still be seen on our little piece of land.” “I cannot say that we arewell. My husband has had an operation and does not keep too well.” She saysthat somehow they survive. They have too small a land to think of anything big.Nagen Sardar says that he has never been able to lease a land due to the lackof funds and the monthly income is not fixed. Nagen’s son is a mason in Kolkataand he hesitates to answer when asked whether his son sends them any money.The pond dug in their land under the NREGA Project took about fifteen days tobe completed, says Bala Sardar. Twelve or thirteen people, including NagenSardar worked on the pond and the work was done in the Bengali month of‘jaishtha’ in 2009. He has not been able to sow any vegetable seeds around thepond because he does not have the money to buy them. Nagen got to knowabout the NREGA Project at a meeting called by the Panchayat memberswhere they were asked to send a collective application for the ponds to be dugin their lands. Sardar says that he gets ten sacks of rice from his fields which laststhe family the rice supply for around eight months of the year. He has to do oddjobs for the rest of the four months in order to be able to buy rice and vegetablesfor the family. The pond hardly has any water as it has a lot of sand at thebottom. The water is not enough to be used for irrigation and now the pond isbeing used for fish farming and household work like bathing and washingutensils. ‘Magh mash’ would see no water in it and this would happen everyyear. “I have a water source further on in the fields and I use that to water theplants. I get no supply from the pond.” says Sardar. He already had a tiny waterhole before and he had had it cut into a pond in order to be able to get morewater for his fields but as there was no water yet, in the pond, he is not beingable to use it at all. He has worked on his own pond for about eight or ten daysbut he does not know how much money had been allotted to be spent on his