REVIVAL INSTINCT
SOURAVMUKHERJEE, 33 Director, Kolkata Society for Cultural Heritage, KOLKATA
As a database administrator at IBM, Sourav Mukherjee was drawing a fat salary, but deep down he knew this was not what he wanted in life. Trekking trips to the remote corners of the country had shown him how women were still second-class citizens. “I realised early that our society cannot develop without women having pride of place in it. Women are excellent managers and have good leadership qualities, but they need to be financially independent to earn that position,” says Banerjee. He first started in 2014 with a pilot project in a village in Bengal. He distributed 300 eggs each for incubation to 30 women of Amanpur village in Keshpur block, West Midnapore district. He also distributed cardboard boxes, a kerosene lamp and taught them how to hatch eggs at home, all learnt from YouTube videos. All this was done with his own money. The idea was to start the women off in the poultry business. Later, he distributed seeds and other agricultural inputs to initiate the women of Murshidabad and West Midnapore into organic farming.
The seeds for the Kolkata Society for Cultural Heritage (KSCH) were sown. Mukherjee left his job in 2012 to be involved full-time in the work. “I was looking at a broader canvas, changing the outlook of the people, the way men treat women, the way the rich judge the poor,” he says. Meanwhile, he kept exploring new avenues. Home-stays was his next big idea. “We started with 35 families in scenic regions of Kurseong, Murshidabad and West Midnapore in 2015, but within some time the business was supporting 300 families. Some were running canteens, some transport arrangements, some worked as tourist guides and arranged entertainment for the guests,” he says.
Apart from this, KSCH has also helped revive traditional arts and crafts and used the expertise of village women in weaving, handloom and pottery. “These women had tremendous potential, what they lacked was a marketing strategy. I helped them develop a brand (Swayamsiddha), a logo and removed the middlemen by linking the buyer with the supplier/ producer. An integrated marketing model has worked wonders.” Today, 4,400 women, hand-held by the KSCH, are earning Rs 5,000 to 10,000 a month.
KSCH is also collaborating with 7,000 self-help groups to market their paper-pulp products made from recycled waste. As India prepares itself for a noplastic future, Sourav has been asking potters of North 24 Parganas to make clay water bottles. The idea seems to have caught on. They have bagged an order worth $5,000 (Rs 3.5 lakh) from New Jersey and the Jharkhand government has also expressed interest. ■
“I REALISED EARLY ON THAT OUR SOCIETY CANNOT DEVELOP WITHOUT WOMEN HAVING PRIDE OF PLACE IN IT”