|
Good, Bad and Ugly
The hyped
image of Kolkata as a disease-festering, slum-ridden city has ensured
a steady stream of funds and visits from foreign celebreties. India Today's
Labonita Ghosh analyses the pros and cons of such donor-connections.
A
few weeks ago, Latino pop star Ricky Martin's visit to Kolkata
was the talk of the town. But he wasn't vacationing nor was he
there for a concert. It turned out that Martin had come to drop by at
Sabera Foundation, a home for street children and orphans. He sang for
the kids, had lunch with them and even played football with them. His
photograph will soon be up on the "family-album wall" at the
Sabera home in Kalikata, near Kolkata, sharing space with Hollywood actors
Antonio Banderas and Penelope Cruz. For Kolkatans, it's becoming passé.
In the past five years,
there's been a veritable parade of foreign celebrities streaming
in to patronise local welfare organisations. In 2000, Irish
funding agency Goal, founded by sports journalist John O'Shea,
brought tennis star Pat Cash for a second time; the year before,
it was Mats Wilander. Australian cricketers Steve and Mark Waugh are regulars
to the city, but not just for a match. They always try to squeeze time
out to visit Udayan, the "resurrection home" for leprosy-afflicted
and destitute children they support. Every two or three years, Dominique
Lapierre and his wife wing into Kolkata to check on the clutch of development
organisations they have been sending royalty-money to in the Sunderbans
area. What is it with the international celebs and Kolkata? The city seems
to get more than its share of glamourazzi from abroad, even though NGOs
in Orissa, Maharashtra and Gujarat far outnumber those in West Bengal.
The answer is obvious: Mother Teresa. If Teresa put Kolkata on the penury
map, Lapierre's book City of Joy further defined the coordinates. The
result: a reinforced image of a city as a disease-festering, slum-infested,
backwards-beyond-redemption hell. Which is why even five
years after Mother's death, foreign volunteers still flock to the Missionaries
of Charity and help generate the hype about
Kolkata abroad.
Nothing can compare with word-of-mouth as star benefactors harp about
their work in Kolkata. "Pat goes on and on about his Kolkata experiences,
on TV, in interviews," says Cash's older half-sister Rosie Jardine.
And the celebs help bring in the moolah too.
Sabera's self-styled US head Melanie Griffith has never been to
the home, but she's opened a swank office in Los Angeles for
collections. Steve Waugh recently auctioned cricket gear of his
teammates (Shane Warne's shoes and Mark's bat and gloves) and made a $60,000
killing in just one night.
But there is also the danger of donor-connections becoming all too important.
"Sometimes a list of Who's Who lets you muscle in on projects,"
says sociologist Swapan Kumar Bhattacharya. At least one Kolkata centre
follows this credo. The homeless children here are brought up "like
little Europeans". The capris-clad youngsters are encouraged to speak
only in English so that they can talk to their big benefactors and help
loosen more purse
strings. The managers have no plans for any vocational training;
so when the kids grow up, they'll have to go back to their old
lives and be in for a rude shock. And their celebrity patrons,
sitting miles away, will never even know about it.
|
|
|
|
|
