The Report - North 24 Parganas

26. ABHILASH SARDARNREGA has huge potential to increase opportunities of additionalemployment and yielding higher income to workers if organised properlyAbhilash Sardar is a rickshaw puller and 45 years old. He is married and has twowives – Sandhya Sardar, 32 years and Renuka Sardar, 35 years. As of now, he hasno children but has raised one of his cousin’s son as his own who is now 25 yearsold. His cousin’s son is however married and has one child who is very young andhas still not started school. His family stays with him and besides their family andhis two wives, Abhilash’s old mother also stays in the same household. Altogetherthere are seven members staying in the same house.“The biggest pain in my life is that I don’t have any children of my own. I haveonly been able to raise my nephew. He is self employed in Delhi. He offers allthat he earns to me, of which some I save for my grandson and the rest is usedup as family expenses. My wife runs a small shop that is owned by the family aswell. Whatever I earn as a van puller is used in family expenses.”Abhilash Sardar has no separate piece of land for cultivation. He says he ownsonly the piece of land on which his house now stands that is about 19 kathasand not even a bigha. It is the same piece of land that he partly uses tocultivate rice however and there are yields once a year. Due to scarcity ofwater, no other crops can be harvested in the same field and therefore itremains as a single crop land.With the help of the NREGA scheme, the government had excavated a pondwherein there were plans of harvesting fish in the long run. Abhilash had alsostarted off with some small tilapia fishes. Unfortunately however, all of thebenefits from excavation were lost during the Aila disaster. So in this calendaryear, there have been very meagre earnings for Abhilash from vegetableharvests that he occasionally has during times he can spare and from additionalwork outside that is mostly very demanding.“My nephew works as a mason in Delhi. He visited us about 6 months ago foronly a week. We don’t see him very often.”Abhilash has not been able to take advantage of the job card very effectivelydue to heart pain and associated health issues. In the recent past, he has alsodeclined working as a labourer in offsite locations. Due to regular chest pains, hehas only been working at home in excavating the pond for a few days and onlyfor rebuilding the premises after Aila’s destructions. Payments for work have beenmade to his bank accounts in some cases and in others it has been direct handto hand cash reimbursements.