In today’s budding age, people are trying hard to endure and make a living. Be it in rural or urban areas, people struggle hard to earn money for themselves along with their family. In a huge country like India, people are facing so many issues regarding employment, education, security, and most significantly, survival. What can a person do to make sure they survive? Maybe get a job or trade or something along those lines? But the people of Bindol village are doing something horrific for their survival.
Bindol village is situated at Raiganj Tehsil of the Uttar Dinajpur district in West Bengal, India. It is 13 kilometres from Raiganj. Bindol village has one more name – the ‘kidney‘ village.
Bindol village is the kidney auction capital the country. People of this village are selling their kidneys to survive. Eventually, quite a lot of them die after a few years. Dinajpur district resembles a bone-dry countryside with no signs of paddy or wheat. The price of the kidneys is supposedly around ₹3-4 lakh. The people of Bindol village are living with no land of their own and the nominal amount of food to nourish their family.
The money from the kidney helps sustain their families but only for some months. Shortly after the surgery, farmers lose their strength to labour, as they subsist with just one kidney.
With time, the disaster has taken a turn. Men are now forcing their wives to put up their kidneys for sale. Most people in the village are daily wage labourers. They told the police during an investigation that they had donated their kidneys with legal documents.
An NGO, ‘Sripur Mahila O Khadi Unnayan Samity’, has been working with the survivors of this disaster but it’s hard to build awareness when the villagers are doing it for their survival.