They had spent their life’s savings to get themselves sterilised without knowing that the government runs a special incentive scheme and pays money to each mother opting for tubectomy.

Thanks to the ignorance of villagers, a racket in sterilisation camps has been thriving in some of the districts of Bengal where illiterate women opting for sterilisation are being asked to cough up at least Rs 600 for each operation.

What is more, there is hardly any guarantee in such camps that the tubectomy is performed as per the laid-down norms to avoid side-effects.

As many as 69 women attended such a camp on Friday at Balidanga village under Ghatal subdivision of West Midnapore district where they had been asked to first cough up Rs 500 against each operation and then, pay up Rs 700 on an average for post-operation medicines.

NGO involved

Reports said a local club, a city-based NGO and some medicine companies had teamed up to organise the camp, flouting all norms that are required to be observed during such operations. Balidanga is about 110 km away from the city. The organisers had deliberately kept the state health directorate in the dark.

However, the local panchayat pradhan was informed of the camp though. “This is absolutely illegal as the government does not grant permission to organise such sterilisation camps at the private level,” Chief Medical Officer (Health) of West Midnapore district K K Bose told Deccan Herald over telephone.
“The innocent villagers had been duped as the authorities pay money to each mother opting to sterilise herself as an incentive.”

The entire camp was organised in a field under a make-shift pandal and the organisers asked the relatives of the women undergoing operation to either ferry them home or the partially unconscious women struggled to walk back home with the help from kin.

A fuming Bose who came to know about this in the evening, immediately ordered an inquiry into this. The local police station said that action could be taken once a complaint is  lodged.

“This is not the first such camp in the district; such camps are a routine affair,” one health department official said on a condition of anonymity. Incidentally, state health minister Surya Kanta Mishra hails from the district.

Women clueless

None of the women knew that the government has a special incentive scheme for tubectomy. “We sold our rickshaw van to organise Rs 1,200  for the operation,” said an elderly lady who brought her daughter-in-law. “Nobody told us that the government gives you money for this.”