It was a usual Sunday morning. As I was getting ready to leave for Baghar, a slum in Howrah, where I have been spending the Sundays for the past several years, a phone call came from the coordinator of the projects there, asking me not to come as a tragedy had struck the place during the night before. Taken aback, I asked her for details. She told me that two young boys had got drowned in the pond in the middle of the slum while the immersion of an idol was taking place, and that the whole community was in mourning. I expressed my shock at this tragic news and I told her that I would be coming shortly.
Pall of Gloom
Baghar is the garbage dumping ground of the Howrah Municipal Corporation. Every day. hundreds of trucks carrying waste materials collected from the corporation area dump them here. Several mountains of garbage dot the place. Some three hundred families, mostly migrants from Bihar, live around this dumping ground, eking out an existence by collecting recyclable materials from the garbage and selling them. The whole place reeks with slime and dirt and unbearable stench, and smoke envelopes the region. People live in highly unhygienic conditions under plastic sheets and in dilapidated huts. Children suffer from malnutrition and from sicknesses associated with unhygienic living conditions.
Eight years ago, the Don Bosco Development Society, the social work wing of the Salesians of Don Bosco in Kolkata, launched a programme in Baghar with a view to weaning away the children and youth from collecting waste materials and putting them on to the path of education and skill training. A number of projects were launched—nutrition programme for babies, health camps, medical help, educational support, computer classes, drinking water supply, making of community toilets, low cost housing and educational tours. Over a period of time, these projects began to bear fruit. They made tangible changes in the slum, especially in the increased admission in schools and decreased school dropouts.
Fr Mathew George SDB
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