West Bengal eager to stop widow migration to UP

West Bengal eager to stop widow migration to UP
SUBRATA NAGCHOUDHURY

CALCUTTA, FEBRUARY 5: May be there will be one positive fallout of the Water controversy. As the tide of protest over Deepa Mehta's film sweeps Varanasi, West Bengal hides its face in shame for having the dubious distinction of ``migrating'' thousands of deserted widows to religious centres in Uttar Pradesh.

Now the state government -- as well as women's groups -- are desperate to rub off the stigma by fast-tracking a survey on the status of widows in Vrindavan. To be followed by a scheme to rehabilitate them as early as possible.

Ironically, the Jyoti Basu government was forced to do this after the Human Resources Development department in the earlier BJP government began pressing the state over such heavy migration of Bengali widows to Mathura, Vrindavan and Varanasi. The Centre had then informed the state that as many as 16,000 widows from West Bengal were living in those areas in ``utter misery.''

A 20-member team from the state has been deployed in Vrindavan to identify the widows fromBengal and record their history and present status. Still, the government is on the defensive. Says B K Mukherjee, deputy secretary of the Social Welfare Department: ``The figure of 16,000 widows given by the Centre seems extremely exaggerated. There are other Bengali speaking areas in the country like Tripura, Assam and Orissa. Besides, many of these migrant widows might have been there from Bangladesh.''

Official sources said that the state agreed to the census after it was told in no uncertain terms that West Bengal must find out why widows from Bengal, in particular, were seeking refuge in UP. All states had the ``burden'' of widows but their migration was virtually nil from other parts of the country. ``The questions so raised hurt the state because it was the country of Sarat Chandra-Vivekananda and Rabindranath,'' says a senior bureaucrat.

Goaded into action, the state social welfare department set up a three-member commission last year headed by Bela Dutta Gupta, chairperson of the statecommission for women, to act as the nodal agency for carrying out the census with an initial sanction of Rs 3 lakh.

Dutta Gupta along with former MP Malini Bhattacharya and Ratnabali Chatterjee of the Calcutta University's History department visited Vrindavan as a pilot team last year.

Talking to The Indian Express, Dutta Gupta said her first impression was that Vrindavan might ``not have more than 6,000 widows from Bengal...Many of them stay in pathetic conditions. Behind the facade of widowhood lies a murky world of exploitation and deprivation.'' But she adds: ``That's my first impression. Their real plight, however, only the survey will be able to find.''

Bhattacharya who is closely associated with the survey said that there might still be a trickle of such widows into these areas. ``But there is an apparent migratory pattern particularly from the Vaishnav regions of the country,'' she said. The influx has taken place particularly along an old pilgrimage route and was heavy in 1923; afterPartition and after the '71 war. According to latest reports, fresh arrivals have been noticed from the cyclone-ravaged parts of Orissa, Bhattacharya said.

The team also visited Amar Bari (My Home), set up by the National Commission of Women in Vrindavan where about 100 widows are accommodated. ``We need many more such homes,'' said Dutta Gupta adding that a lot of ``internal politics'' is involved in the entire issue. Though she did not elaborate, Ratnabali Chatterjee, who was a member of the pilot team, said that many houses there were donated for the widows but they are being targeted by locals and have ``already changed hands.''