Kolkata

A radio report made such an impression on Gisela Schulze that she felt impelled to take action. It described in detail the hardships and misery to which women in the countryside in India were subjected, an existence with no chance of even a glimmer of hope. But then a positive exception was outlined: if a woman could sew and if she had a sewing machine, then she would normally be able to support her family. Gisela Schulze was inspired by this idea; she became determined to provide a sewing machine for a woman in India. She launched several attempts, but her efforts were to no avail.

The “Journalists’ Exchange”, initiated by the Goethe-Institut, proved to be a veritable godsend for the woman from the city of Nürtingen in the Swabian Alb region. “Can you help me?” she asked via the blog www.zur-zeit-calcutta.de on the internet. And by a happy coincidence, only two days previously, I had been visiting the little village of Karanjali.

Basav Bhattacharya, journalist, PR consultant und activist of the World Wildlife Fund (WWF), who has already initiated several social projects, has realised a great dream here with his little organisation “Sporsho” (that means in Bengali “wonderful touch”): a sewing school is to help young women to become independent and to sell their products not only in the local markets but also in Calcutta. This concept has already functioned with an embroidery collective of young men (we wrote about this recently on our report page under the title “The Good Man of Karanjali”).

There is a quite amazing parallel here to the Swabian Alb region: with this very same concept Gustav Werner and others had given many women a perspective in the 19th century. “Nürtingen has made our dream come true,” say Basav Bhattacharya and his co-worker Mandira Mitra, whose grandmother will be holding the courses for the young women. Free of charge, of course. A new dream: development aid directly from person to person. But that is not the only dream that these two cherish. Basav’s vision is that of development aid from person to person, on equal terms, in the spirit of worldwide fellowship. And since he has had such good experiences with Nürtingen up to now, he could well imagine expanding this cooperation.

“Sporsho” is, of course, not able to pay for the flight to Calcutta. The people who wish to participate in the project have to finance this themselves. “But once they are here, then they are our guests, they live with us and eat with us.” The accommodation does not have the quality of a hotel, it is a simple place with only very basic sanitary facilities. But at mealtimes the Bengalis do their best to pamper their guests. Basav could imagine a very wide range of participants in this project: for example, doctors who deal with mothers and children. Or nurses who wish to pass on their knowledge to people in the village. Or also craftspeople, whose skills would be extremely useful: here Basav is thinking of carpenters and joiners as well as of people who could teach others to repair broken machines (really important in the Bengali countryside). And anyone who knows how to make pottery or sew bed linen is more than welcome. The man from Calcutta was also quite thrilled to hear that the University of Applied Sciences in Nürtingen offers a course in agricultural studies. Perhaps one could develop a joint project with the students and the farmers of Karanjali.

The stuff that dreams are made on, certainly. But the example of Gisela Schulze’s sewing machines shows that some dreams do come true. We look forward to hearing more from Karanjali.