The Report - North 24 Parganas

17. SUJAN SHAOWNREGA is an effective instrument for enhancing stability in the life ofvillagersSujan Shaow, 55 years has five members in the family consisting of his wife andfour children. His elder daughter has been recently married and now only fourthem live together in his house. Sujan has been a resident of Sech Doba for morethan 100 years. His grandfather and his father have all lived in the same house.Currently his father is about 75 years old. The property is therefore an ancestralproperty. “We are all very happy here. We donot have political differences in thevillage. Many tribes stay together in this village and yet we are all very friendlyand cooperative. Even outsiders who come and visit us, donot feel like leavingthis peaceful land.”Sujan’s son is now studying BA IInd year and one of his daughters is appearing forMadhyamik. Most of the family members are receiving proper education. Sujanhimself never had a lot of access to education owing to the fact that he hadquite unfortunately lost his mother at the age of one and half years. “But I haveheard a lot about my mother from my neighbors and so I donot regret her lossanymore at this age,” he says.Sujan had to mortgage his two bighas of land for his daughter’s marriage.“When my brother’s left, I was alone in my house. I used to work the whole yearround and have lot of excess money as a bachelor. It was then that I decided toa buy a piece of land – and it is this piece of land that I have mortgaged for mydaughter’s marriage.” The house that Sujon lives in belongs to his father howeverhe states and he has inherited it from him.Sujon feels the village has all other facilities that the people need. “We havesupplies of water from the tank and the water is pumped through pipes. Thiswater is used for drinking and other purposes. In the past we had to travel to anearby village for clean water. It used to take a lot of time but now we havebeen saved of this difficulty.”The pond on his house premises has helped him a lot. He says, “not only have webenefited from the pond but others also living nearby take water from the pondfor drinking and cultivation purposes.” The work has been done very recentlyand took about a month for completion. “It took some time because every nowand then we had to reduce the rising water level while cleaning the mud layers.This involved additional labor costs and expenses and machines had to be usedto pump the extra water while further excavation.” The labor costs for this project