Cooch Behar, West Bengal.

Seventy-year-old Sona Mani Das lives in an ashram in Cooch Behar, on the foothills of the Eastern Himalayas in West Bengal. For sustenance, she does all the chores, prepares temple food and collects alms — the ashram depends on donations and alms. All the seven women in the ashram, located about 700 kilometres from the state capital Kolkata, are abandoned, destitute or widowed, and rely on donations for the smallest of their needs such as toothpaste, soap and oil.

Most of them were married off when they were barely 11 to much older men. Das, for instance, was 12 when she was married to a 45-year-old man.

Once these young women were widowed, family members left them in ashrams in West Bengal or sent them to Vrindavan in Uttar Pradesh, 1,000 km away from West Bengal, to join the huge community of widows already there, left to live off alms and die.

The state does have the West Bengal Widow Pension Scheme, 2010, which gives any widow who is 18 or above, is Indian and a resident in West Bengal for 10 years on the date of filing the Widow Pension form (provided they are not drawing any other assistance), a pension of Rs 1,000 a month. However, many women like Das are yet to receive any of this amount. 

This assumes all the more significance because a recent (February 2020) World Bank document titled ‘West Bengal Women’s Empowerment And Inclusive Social Protection Program’ revealed that the elderly population is growing at about five per cent a year. The state is rapidly ageing. And, the report revealed that the percentage of widows receiving pensions till 2019 was just 10 per cent, when the 2021 target is reaching 33 per cent of those in need.

According to the document, there is an urgent need to earmark finance for increasing old age care, pension and health costs driven by the ageing of the population. “The state’s dependency burden is going up with aging. The proportion of the state’s elderly population became higher than the rest of India in 2011 when it was about 8.5% and was about 11.1% (India 9.6%) for 2019,” it said.

By 2041 a fifth of West Bengal’s population is expected to be elderly compared to a sixth for the whole of India. “This rapid aging of the state is driven primarily by below replacement fertility rate of 1.8 live births per woman (replacement would be 2.1). There is some mitigation of the dependency burden by in-migration from neighboring states but data suggests that this is not large enough to offset this major challenge,” the document added. 

Of eligibility criteria 

Das was just 18 when she came to Cooch Behar from Nishiganj, escaping an abusive marriage. She left behind a three-year-old daughter after a particularly violent episode and came to the ashram with some money hidden in a knot in her sari. 

Das has been eligible for this pension for years now, but never received it. “I got my Aadhar card and Voter ID, but when I went to apply for the widow pension in the BDO [block development office], I was told to come the next week, and then the next. I followed up for months before giving up. I had to spend money to go to their office. Where will I get that money from?” she asked.

The staff is also inconsiderate, she told Gaon Connection. “They ridicule me, asking me what expenditure I have as I am a widow and I live for free in an ashram. It is very humiliating,” she added.

According to the eligibility criteria for the pension, the family income should be below Rs 1,000 a month, and the beneficiary should not be looked after by anyone. However, professional beggars (officially defined as those who are not homeless and see begging as a lucrative way of making money) and mendicants are not eligible to apply. Likewise, those already receiving disability pension, old age pension, farmers’ pension or assistance under the state, Central government or other institution’s family pension scheme, are not entitled to this widow pension. 

The pension is uniform for all, and the amount is decided by the Department of Women and Child Development and Social Welfare of the State Government. Applications for this widow pension are available free of cost in the block development or panchayat offices in rural areas.

An application for widow pension takes anywhere between a month or two to process, after which the widow starts getting her pension, Tapan Kumar Biswas, district social welfare officer, Cooch Behar, told Gaon Connection. “In Cooch Behar district, there are 9,722 beneficiaries. But, I agree that there’s not enough promotion done about this scheme. The awareness is very low in rural areas, and we are planning to increase that,” he said.

Puspa Karmakar, who is 80 years old, moved from Dinhata in Cooch Behar to the ashram where Das lives. It has been 22 years since her husband passed away, but she is yet to receive any assistance. “Two years after my husband’s demise, I went to the BDO office in Dinhata and enquired about the scheme. I was asked questions about my caste. They said I was from a privileged caste and seemed from a well-off background, so why do I need a widow pension?” she told Gaon Connection. 

 Karmakar visited them again before the COVID-19 lockdown was announced and was told elections were nearing and that they “did not have time for such unnecessary work”. Karmakar is sure that if she goes now, they will blame the delay on the pandemic. “It is terrible that I have to beg for something that I am entitled to,” she rued.

Among the stories of deprivation, some positive narratives stand out. Kananbala Barman, an 80-year-old widow, has been receiving her widow pension for the past six years. Barman moved to Cooch Behar from Bangladesh during the partition. She was only 22 and had two young children when her zamindar husband died.

She put her younger child in an orphanage in Cooch Behar, and raised the elder one by working in a beedi factory, and selling paper bags and turmeric packets on the streets. Six years ago, a kind temple visitor told her about the scheme and helped her apply. “I wish I had known about the scheme earlier. The thousand rupees would have helped me so much,” she said.

Sixty-one-year-old Jaya Mahanta is also receiving the widow pension for the last five years now. She too works in the same ashram where Barman lives. “Right after my husband passed away, my relatives and in-laws gave me a guide to lead a widow’s life. My diet, clothes, lifestyles, even the bed I choose to sleep in, was decided by them,” she told Gaon Connection.

“My children had to discontinue their studies because there wasn’t any financial support. Only five years ago I came to know about the widow pension scheme and since then I receive one thousand rupees every month,” she said.

Lack of beneficiary data

How many widows in the state are covered by this scheme, and how many avail of it? “The number of widows benefitted by this scheme is innumerable. We cannot provide the numbers as it is a very old scheme and we do not have the time to find the records,”  Sanghamitra Ghosh, secretary, Department of Women and Child Development and Social Welfare, West Bengal, told Gaon Connection. 

Soriya Banu, from Kaliachak village in Malda district, about 325 km from Kolkata, has been reporting stories on widow pension schemes for over five years now. “Many women are not aware of the scheme. And, there is no effort to educate them about their rights,” she told Gaon Connection.

In and around where Banu lives, “there are easily 20 widows who still haven’t received the pension even after applying for it, and around 15 who don’t know such a scheme exists”, she said. “The problem is that these women are only told ‘come back’, ‘come back’, for years. They get fed up after a while. There is also a lack of interest among government bodies. Every death is registered in the panchayat office before a death certificate is given. In such a case, why is it so hard to help these women avail of the pension?” she asked.

This pension might be a meagre amount, but it still empowers women. Twentysix widows live in a home run by All Bengal Women’s Union, which was instituted in 1932. Most of them are above 60. “They are all from different parts of West Bengal and none of them receives a widow pension. We did try but there are so many formalities that we abandoned the idea. All of them are taken care of with the grant we receive from the state government. But, if they receive the money, it will add to their sense of dignity, and they might feel self-sufficient,” Amita Sen, general secretary of the organisation, told Gaon Connection.

The World Bank’s recent document  says the West Bengal government is developing a long-term strategy to increase inclusiveness of its various social protection schemes and tailor them to the needs of the evolving economy, and eventually address the growing challenge of ageing. The government strategy is to introduce a comprehensive widow pension that would expand the current schemes.

If that happens, even if the amount only guarantees a basic quality of life, abandoned widows who seek refuge in ashrams and other institutions will have a half-smile on their faces, and a lot more confidence.