Duare Sarkar providing employment opportunities to over 1.25L folk artistes
Kolkata: Bengal's biggest outreach drive Duare Sarkar— the brainchild of Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee—is ensuring job opportunities for above 1.25 lakh folk artistes across the state.
The folk artistes are being engaged to create awareness among people about the benefits of the Duare Sarkar initiative of the state government.
Folk artistes were also engaged for the same purpose in the first edition of Duare Sarkar held at the end of 2020. But in the second edition, more folk artistes would get benefitted from the Duare Sarkar initiative.
"At least four folk artistes are getting engaged to create awareness for each camp. As per the present projection, more than 32,000 camps would be held this time creating job opportunities for around 1.28 lakh folk artistes," said a senior state government officer.
Besides providing the folk artistes to showcase their talent in front of lakhs of people turning up at the Duare Sarkar camps, it has also created a means for them to have a steady earning specially when it had not become possible to organise cultural programmes in the past four months due to second wave of Covid pandemic. Each of the artistes gets Rs 1,000 per day for their performance from the state government.
Besides Baul and Chhau artistes in south Bengal districts, folk artistes have also played a crucial role in north Bengal districts as well in making people realise that "Duare Sarkar apnar dorkar (You need Duare Sarkar)". In a tweet of District Information and Cultural Officer of Darjeeling, a video clip features an artist enrolled under Lok Prasar Prakalpa "is singing a Nepali sweet song sitting on the lap of green hill off Bara Patabong Duare Sarkar camp at Rongit I Gram Panchayat under Pulbazar Bijanbari Block".
The Mamata Banerjee government had introduced the Lok Prasar Prakalpa to provide financial assistance to 1.95 lakh folk artistes to save many art forms of Bengal from getting extinct. Each of the artistes gets retainer fee of Rs 1,000 per month while senior artistes, above 60 years of age, also receive pension of Rs 1000 every month under the scheme apart from a separate payment for performing in any programme.
