Visually impaired IIT student raises funds, essentials for his Koli community
A few days after Prime Minister Narendra Modi announced the national lockdown on March 24, Kailash Tandel received a call for help. The 36-year-old had recently started a doctoral thesis at the Indian Institute of Technology-bombay, and Bhagwan Vival often ferried him in his auto rickshaw inside its large leafy campus. Vival, in his 40s and a resident of the eastern suburb of Chandivli, wasn’t making enough money to run his household. Mumbai may be the most affected city in the country today, but even in March the effects of the coronavirus pandemic were felt almost immediately in a city. The heat was sweltering, businesses large and small had closed down and public transport, including threewheelers had been stopped to curb the spread of the coronavirus disease.
Tandel, who is visually impaired, decided to turn to his institutional department to raise funds for the driver; within a day, he collected ₹5,000.
That’s when he decided to do this on a larger scale.
A first-generation doctoral scholar in his family, Tandel belongs to the Koli community — one of the oldest surviving indigenous communities of the islands that were reclaimed and stitched up to form the city of Mumbai as we know it today. Traditionally, the community earns money through fishing, but the lockdown had put a stop to it. Some of the busiest fish markets in the city like Bhaucha Dhakka or Sassoon Dock in South Mumbai remain closed.
“Some fisherfolk have started fishing for either self-consumption or selling their wares at a small-scale level but unless the markets open, there will be no business,” said Tandel, whose father Ganjan and brother Harshad, are fishermen.
“Initially I waited to see if political representatives or community leaders are reaching out to the Koli communities. When I saw there was no help coming, I started collecting funds to help the fisherfolk,” said Tandel, who sought funds from IIT-B colleagues, connections to networks through his earlier alma mater, the Tata Institute of Social Sciences (TISS), and ration kits from non-governmental organisation, Yuva.
In the past two months, he has built a team of 15 volunteers — from his own residential colony at Machimaar Nagar colony in Colaba — to provide dry ration, sanitary napkins and medicines to over 800 residents of Machimaar Nagar, Sudaam jhopdi, Darya Nagar and Murti Nagar, spread across southern Mumbai.
The volunteers, including brother Harshad and his wife, Leena, make a list of people and their needs, note their mobile numbers and call them once they have kits ready. Apart from distributing the kits, the volunteers have also distributed 300 sanitisers.