Book 2 - Ebu

Learning Resource Kit: Book 2
Many of them have been physically assaulted several times. “We are very poor. Earlier,
at times we travelled without ticket and the railway staff and police used to beat us
and throw us out of the trains. But now we have managed to acquire the ‘Izzat’ cards
issued for BPL passengers for Rs 25 per month. At least, the harassment from railway
staff has reduced,” says Usha Pramanik, 42, a fish vendor, hailing from Gordor village
in Diamond Harbour in South 24 Parganas. She brings seasonal fish like ‘boal’, hilsa,
‘puti’ and ‘bhetki’ to the market near Sealdah station every day. Her income is also
seasonal, dwindling to a pittance at the end of winter when the water bodies in rural
areas dry up.
According to railway officials, women comprise 30 per cent of the total ‘Izzat’ card
holders under the Eastern Railway. But the women cannot forget the trauma they
had to go through in order to get one. Elaborates Kalpana Mandal, 39, of Mograhat
in Diamond Harbour, who sells vegetables in Kole market in Sealdah along with
her husband, “Merely showing our BPL cards was not enough. First, there was the
harassment to just get the railway forms. We had to run around for almost a month
before we got our hands on the forms. Then they had to be signed by the local
councillor for which we had to beg and plead and pay touts. That took about three
months, a lot of sweat and tears, for the process to be completed.”
Then there is also political harassment under a system called ‘tola neva’, or fixing
vending spots in the markets near the station. Local goons, owing allegiance to
different political parties, give out spots to the vendors in the train itself after
collecting money as ‘hafta’ (weekly protection money). “It’s ‘either pay the demanded
rate or lose your spot’. Women vendors are bullied more as they are unable to fight
back. If they refuse to pay the rate, the space is allotted to another and they are
threatened with physical harm. The market traders’ associations are supposed to issue
passes to the vendors but it’s never done and that is why we have no fixed place and
have to pay the weekly charge to the goons,” rues Saira Bibi.
Despite the severe odds, the women vendors have taken the necessity of temporary
migration from rural to urban areas in their stride. Despite the chains of poverty,
they survive, facing harassment in all forms through sheer grit and determination.
*© Women’s Feature Service
Reproduced with permission from Women’s Feature Service, www.wfsnews.org
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