Earning More Than A Living

It is a blazingly hot day in Kolkata and I am making my way down a back road in search of Ankur Kala Women’s Centre. Determined children grab at my clothes insistently until I offer up a stack of rupees, which are immediately snatched out of my hand by a girl with hard fingers who seems determined not to share them with the others. At the first sign that I might be prepared to relinquish my water bottle, that too is snatched away. It’s a relief to get out of the heat and away from the constant attention when I finally track down Ankur Kala’s small showroom.

I had heard that this was a place offering the women of Kolkata’s slums something different – a chance not to beg, but to work and earn a living. In particular they take in those who are abandoned, destitute, orphaned, widowed or victimized by their husbands or families.

Looking around the showroom, I see some of the fruits of their work. Shelves are piled high with brightly coloured bags and clothes, while on the counter there is an array of homemade jams and pickles. All of these products have been made by women who have been identified as being particularly needy. The organisation interviews everyone who seeks help here and visits their home to assess their situation. If taken on, they will receive a monthly stipend of 800 Rupees (£11) while they join a training program which, alongside basic literacy training, also teaches tailoring, catering, how to make jams, squash and pickles, silk screen printing and batik design. Batik – a form of manual wax-resist dyeing – seems particularly popular as I scan the showroom. The training is no part-time endeavor – it typically lasts for two years although the teachers will continue to work with the women until they are able to become self-sufficient.

I hear a story about Parveen, who came to Ankur Kala after the death of the middle-aged man she had been forced to marry at fourteen. When he died she was left to support their child alone. Today, she is a woman transformed - earning enough to support them both and still teaching here at the centre. I am told her story is typical. Almost all of the women who come to Ankur Kala have been victims of oppression or exploitation and typically live in slum conditions with no assets of their own. There are currently 150 students in training here, and in total around 1500 women have come through the program since Ankur Kala was founded in 1982.

I make a few purchases - my favourite is a small notebook covered in blue and green splotches, etched with pictures of suns, moons and stars – and step back outside into the heat. The children are nowhere to be seen but they’re still on my mind. I think of Parveen, who was married off when she wasn’t much older than the girl who was grasping for rupees. Then I think of her own child, who now doesn’t have to beg or to think about marriage just yet and whose mother has won back her self-confidence and her dignity. Ankur Kala might not be able to provide work for every mother in Kolkata’s slums, but the many women who do come through these doors aren’t just earning a living, but something else that money just can’t buy.

You don’t have to come all the way to Kolkata to support the work that happens at Ankur Kala. The women sell their own products through their online shop and their work is even stocked in the UK, at The Fair Shop in Brighton.

Cricket Diplomacy

Late in the evening of Saturday 2^nd April at the Wankhede stadium in Mumbai, Indian cricket captain MS Dhoni thumped the final ball of the World Cup for six to clinch a victory that brought India’s billion people together in fist-pumping celebration.

That sudden rush of collective joy may have brought them together, but the moment soon passed. As Manu Joseph, the editor of India’s ‘Open’ magazine, wrote in the New York Times: “Cricket is the only manmade phenomenon that connects the nation’s upper classes with its vast masses. There is absolutely nothing else.”

Dhoni himself provides a neat encapsulation of India’s two worlds. In return for leading India to success in a World Cup for the first time in 28 years he received a bonus of 20m rupees (£286,000) from the chief minister of Delhi on top of the 10m rupees (£143,000) that each player received from the Indian cricketing authorities. Both figures are dwarfed by the amount he will now command for commercial endorsements – estimated at around £2 million each – and believe me, he does a lot of adverts, mainly for cars, motor oil and expensive whiskey.

Meanwhile in the other India, politicians in Uttarakhand jumped on the Dhoni bandwagon to announce that to honour the great man, they would finally get around to building a road to Lwali, the tiny village where the Indian captain’s father grew up.

The plan was greeted with skepticism. “We have heard that there will be [a] road for Lwali,” said Dhoni’s uncle Dhanpat Singh Dhoni. “But I am not impressed as many such announcements come to nothing.” It wouldn’t be the first time an Indian politician has tried to hijack a celebration for publicity and then quietly reneged on their promises.

It wasn’t just local politicians seizing the opportunity presented by the goodwill around the World Cup. In what was dubbed “cricket diplomacy”, the semi-final between India and Pakistan saw Indian Prime Minister Dr. Manmohan Singh invite his Pakistani counterpart Yusuf Raza Gilani to come to India and watch the game alongside him. Gilani agreed, and it became the first time he had visited the country since the 2008 Mumbai attacks – the investigation of which is still very much an issue of contention between the two countries. Despite their fierce rivalry the match highlighted how much they have in common. The US Ambassador to India, Timothy J. Roemer, described the talks as: “A very successful dialogue,” and added that from: “Cricket diplomacy we have real substance, engagement on issues which are critical and people-to-people ties.”

There are many different Indias, but cricket holds a special place in each of them: whether you’re in the grounds of an expensive private school or a rural field with twigs for makeshift stumps, or whether you’re a VIP at Eden Gardens in Kolkata or huddled round a flickering television set, sport has a way of levelling things, if only temporarily. There’s a sense of confidence and ambition to India that their cricket team seems to embody, and while there’s still a long way to go until we see social justice on India’s streets, the knowledge that the universally-adored record-breaking batsman Sachin Tendulkar finally has his hands on the World Cup is just enough justice to bring a smile to the face of India’s cricket fans.