A woman wronged for much of her life is cultivating hope on a piece of land not far from Kolkata.
For the past three years, she has been farming seasonal crops ranging from potato to bitter gourd on two bighas of land — most of it leased — in a pocket of Basirhat in North-24 Parganas.
The woman, now 27, was allegedly trafficked to a brothel in Kalighat in 2011, when she was 14. By the time she was rescued the next year, the physical assault she had suffered scarred her for life.
She has travelled a long way since. She had to fight stigma and patriarchy at every step as she tried to earn a living. She has tried trading poultry, she has tried trading in clothes. Before 2021, she also worked as a daily wage earner on farmlands.
“When I started farming on my own, people laughed at me. Women can only work as labourers, I was told. But I decided to give it a go. Now, I have to employ male labourers during sowing and harvesting,” the woman told this newspaper on Monday.
She usually sells her produce to wholesalers, some of whom come to Kolkata.
For the past 18 months or so, she has been taking home Rs 7,000 to Rs 8,000 every month. That is after the spending on fertilisers, seeds, pesticides and other fixed expenses.
She has to pay an annual land lease of around Rs 35,000.
Becoming a member of a self-help group helped her get a loan of Rs 35,000 in 2021. The money — along with a bulk of her life’s savings — was instrumental in helping her take a tiny parcel of land, 75km from the heart of Kolkata, on lease.
Over the past three years, the size of the land has grown to two bighas. She has repaid the first loan and taken another — of Rs 40,000 — through the same self-help group.
In November last year, she had sown potatoes on the land. She has just started harvesting. The produce will be around 10 tonnes.
The woman lives with her husband and a son who is in Class III. Her husband works at a brick kiln for three months of the year and helps her in farming for the remaining months.
She gets up before sunrise every day. After the morning chores, she is at the field by 8.30am. She comes back in the afternoon and cooks food. After lunch, she goes back to the farmland.
“A steady income is key to a life of dignity that I have been looking for since long. The same people who would call me names are now treating me differently,” she
said.
As a teenager, she was befriended by a youth who allegedly trafficked her in June 2011. She was rescued from Kalighat in February 2012.
“The first few years after the rescue were very tough on the survivor and her family. The main accused wielded a lot of clout in the neighbourhood. The survivor’s house was attacked more than once. The family had to run away and live at another place. They faced threats and a lot of pressure to withdraw the case,” said Bikash Das, secretary of the Basirhat Initiative For Rural Dedication (BIRD), a local NGO that works with trafficking survivors.
The survivor had to undergo a long counselling therapy before she could start stepping out of her home again.
A missing complaint lodged with Basirhat police station was later turned into an FIR. Six persons are accused in the case.
“All six are out on bail now as the police could not file a chargesheet within the stipulated 90 days. The case is still in the evidence-collection stage in the Basirhat additional district judge’s court,” said Pranab Chakraborty, the survivor’s lawyer.
“The woman has shown great resilience and courage. She has faced threats and intimidation from the accused. The case has been dragging on for years. But her spirit is intact,” Chakraborty said.
An application seeking victim compensation for the survivor is pending with the district legal services authority (DLSA).
“If I get any money, I will take some more land on lease for farming,” the woman said.
