One thousand underprivileged women will get a new cotton sari each this Puja, thanks to the efforts of an institution that mentors children from the margins.
The women live in and around Patuli, Briji and New Garia, on the southeastern fringes of Kolkata. The men in their families are mostly daily wage earners. They work as rickshaw-pullers, construction labourers, plumbers, electricians and caretakers of many apartments and housing complexes off the EM Bypass. Most of the women work as domestic help.
The campaign, titled One New Cotton Sari, was launched in 2020, during a raging pandemic, by a group called the Humans of Patuli, an organisation that works for communal harmony and had campaigned extensively against the new citizenship matrix. Since last year, the campaign has been helmed by students and teachers of Rokeya Shiksha Kendra, a school run by the Humans of Patuli.
Rokeya started in February 2021 as a learning centre for children of unorganised workers during the lockdown, when Covid had forced the closure of schools. But it has over the past year emerged as their second home, offering classes in all subjects as well as hosting reading sessions, film screenings and cultural programmes for its pupils.
Now in its fourth year, the sari campaign has kept growing in scale. The number of donors has gone up. The number of recipients has also gone up. The drive has reached new neighbourhoods. The organisers accept money or new saris from donors.
“Last year, we could give 600 new saris in total. The amount collected in donations was less than Rs 2 lakh. This year, the collection stands at Rs 2.5 lakh. Plus, we got around 200 new saris,” said Kasturi Basu, one of the founders of the Humans of Patuli and Rokeya Sikhsa Kendra.
“For the past two years, past and present students, teachers and volunteers of Rokeya have been doing everything. They visit the neighbourhoods to identify the recipients (of the new saris). Many of our students come from these places. The entire area was divided into five zones. The team was split up accordingly and each zone was covered,” said Basu.
Teams led by former students like Bhabatosh Mondal, Rudradeep Sarkar, both in college now, and current students like Narayan Mondal and Jay Naskar, both in Class X, scurried the neighbourhoods before finalising the list of recipients.
In addition to new saris, around 150 sets of new clothes have also been bought for distribution among children. The distribution started on Tuesday.
Sahana Basu, who teaches Bengali at Rokeya, said involving the young boys and girls in the campaign made a lot of difference.
“A common practice at many puja pandals is to issue coupons or tokens to the recipients, have them stand in a long queue and give them food or clothes. But that top-down approach lacks dignity. When these children visit homes in the neighbourhoods known to them, there is a degree of familiarity. It feels like a genuine gift,” said Sahana Basu.
A Patuli resident, who retired as a scientist from a central research institute, is among the regular donors to the sari campaign.
“People in the unorganised sector are under enormous financial stress. In a very small way, we want to tell them they they are not forgotten. We want to make them a party to this festival of happiness,” said the donor, who did not wish to be named.