A football academy near Kolkata is giving children of sex workers the courage to dream.
A walk along a muddy, broken path which branches off from the highway 25 km south of Kolkata leads to a rusty gate surrounded by green fields. Enter the gate and more muddy pathways lead past a small cluster of cottages to a football field. It’s Tuesday and about 30 boys and girls wearing colourful jerseys and football shoes are in the middle of a training session — the boys’ team in one part of the field and the girls’ in the other. Even as they manoeuvre the ball past the opponents and struggle to score a goal, the coach’s whistle brings the game to a temporary halt. The young members of Durbar Football Academy (DFA) pause to take a break.
Located in semi-urban Baruipur, DFA is not just another football academy, but a game changer for its members most of whom are children of sex workers. The academy, which produced India's captain for the junior team that made it to the finals of an international football tournament, hopes to not only bring these marginalised kids into the mainstream but also give them a sense of pride and the confidence that comes with achievement.
Run by Durbar Mahila Samanwaya Committee (DMSC), an NGO for sex workers, DFA began as an extension of Rahul Vidya Niketan, a shelter for sex workers’ children. In the last five years, the academy has earned such a name for itself that members of the local community and from other families are also knocking on its doors to get their children admitted here.
The football ground is uneven with mounds of mud and craters that fill up with water every time it rains; the two goalposts are bereft of nets. But none of this bothers the young players. On Tuesdays and Thursdays, this unimpressive football ground finds children from Rahul Vidya Niketan in their football gear practising their game. Every Saturdays, children from the neighbourhood also join them and then all of them train together.
It was not, however, always like this. “When we first came here, we were abused on the roads. People at school would not speak to us. They thought we would all give them HIV,” recalls Priyanka Baga, a 14-year-old resident of Rahul Vidya Niketan who is part of the girls’ football team at DFA. “Now, that has changed; I have friends outside home,” smiles Baga who dreams of becoming a lawyer when she grows up.
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Recently, 13-year old Subrata Das from the academy, led India to the finals of the under-13 Asian Youth Football Championship held in Yazd, Iran. Though the Indian team lost to Iran in the finals, Das’s achievement went a long way in establishing the DFA's credentials. Das is one of the neighbourhood children who come to train at the academy every Saturday. But there are others from Rahul Vidya Niketan who are also making a name for themselves. There is Karan Paswan who has been chosen to play in the national team. And there is Sajjak Ali who has qualified for the West Bengal team for an Indian Football Association (IFA)-affiliated under-12 tournament. The academy has also managed an affiliation with IFA and will participate in the Nursery League — the championship for under-12 teams.
Though many of them are still very young, the children are all aware of their background and the stigma associated with it. All of them want to take themselves and their mothers away from this life. The academy has given them the confidence that this is achievable. “I want to become someone big when I grow up,” says one of the boys who is not 10 yet. “I want to own a car and take my mother away from here,” he says. Though he, like the others, loves football, he’s not sure if the game alone is the way out of this life.
Acceptance has been hard won. Most of the children have had to go through years of alienation and discrimination. But a slow change is taking place. “Just because I come from ‘there’ does not mean I am different or inferior. I come first in my class. The other kids have no choice but to stop making fun of me and be friends with me,” says one youngster.
“Sport is a great leveller,” adds Samarjit Jana, mentor, DMSC. “When DFA started five years ago, the idea was just to provide a recreational activity to the children staying in the home. Now we have children from outside coming to train.”
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There were two reasons that the organisation thought of setting up a football academy: the need to form a link between children of sex workers who were residents of the shelter and the community outside; and a more basic reason, that there was no money to consider any another sport. “Football has always been a poor man's sport,” says Biswajeet Majumder, the coach at DFA. “Brazil, which is the Mecca of the global sport, is also a poor country. It is a game everyone can play as long as you have a football and some talent.”
Funds remain a problem. The team which will play the under-12 IFA tournament has no sponsors. The expenses of sending the players abroad and getting them to play nationally are borne by DMSC. Its annual turnover though is Rs 12 crore, most of which comes from its financial arm, Usha Multipurpose Cooperative Society, which works as a bank for the sex workers of Bengal. “The idea behind Durbar is to reduce the exploitation of sex workers. While Usha helps them save money, DFA is an attempt to bring their children into the mainstream,” says Bharati Dey, secretary, DMSC.
Durbar, roughly translated, means ‘indomitable’. This is the spirit which comes to mind when young girls in football jerseys standing on a rugged football field talk at DFA about their ambitions, of becoming pilots and doctors.
For now, DFA might just have pulled off a miracle, in being able to bridge the chasm between stigma and middleclass morality.
