I am narrating a story of our district level monitoring team's first hand experience while visiting at Panighatta Tea Garden just 20 years ago while conducting the IEC programme of Swarna Jayanti Gram Swarojgar Yozana, DRD Cell, DGHC under Mrs. Doma Sherpa, Project Director. Our resource team had to halt one night at Panightta Tea Garden area during our official visit where we found about 80 to 90 percentages garden workers' children were the victim of night blindness disease. We were quite astonished to find out such a plight of the tribal (adivashi) garden families in the locality.
Our team reported the matter to the higher authority and then CPM government under Dr. Surya Kant Mishra, MIC Panchyat & Rural Development Ministry, Govt. of West Bengal initiated an medical enquiry about the mass causes of the night blindness disease. Their finding was reported that due to lack of vitamin intake by the tribal low income garden workers' families in the region. Actually the poor life style of the garden workers were the root cause of that plight as the garden workers used to get their meagre weekly wages on every Saturday which was spent in local alcohol (handi) and pork meat. Just after two days, they used to take boiled rice with salt and chilly. That food habits caused the deficiency of vitamin intake in the bodies resulting massive incidence of the night blindness in the region. Though the garden management had provided every garden family a small plot of land for their residential and kitchen garden purposes but failed to cultivate vegetables in their homestead land.
The erstwhile DRD Cell, DGHC had started a short course training and awareness workshop of Self Help Groups to start up the square meter vegetable garden in the hill of DGHC. We provided 10 days course to all the members of SHGs and provided them vegetable seeds after training. But due to lack of proper monitoring and follow up, the old habits of the people of this region failed to change.
But I had learnt as a resource person of the Swarna Jayanti Gram SwarojgarYozana that the green vegetables intake is very important to lead a healthy and disease free life. I used to cultivate the organic vegetable in my small backyard garden of homestead land around my Mansarover Homestay even during my hectic busy scheduled of service life and enjoyed a lot of gardening works after my post retirement life at home which make me hale and hearty.
Whenever the green vegetables harvested in my garden, I need not required to go to local vegetables market during this pandemic period of covid 2019-2022. We can even harvest organic vegetable in terrace garden in plastic pots. I do use the vermi-compost manure from my own production out of kitchen wastes and decomposed grasses and banana trunk.
i
