Dilip Ghosh with daughter Shampa and his source of livelihood, a pitcher of water. Picture by Amit Biswas

Mayakhol (Nadia), Feb. 11: Dilip Ghosh cannot see his daughter’s tears but could feel her pain.

Last month, when he decided to pull his only school-going child, Shampa, out of Anandanagar High School in Nadia’s Dhubulia, for want of money, the Class V student was shattered and dumped her books into a pond.

A pained Dilip became desperate for work. His family — Dilip has another daughter, four-year-old Swapna, and a son, two-year-old Rupam — had been struggling to survive on Rs 10-20 a day, which his wife Fultuli earned by selling shaak (spinach).

When Dilip heard about the National Rural Employment Guarantee Act, under which jobs were being handed for the construction of a road connecting Mayakhol and Krishnagar, he rushed to panchayat pradhan Samar Ghosh.

Dilip’s name was put on the shortlist of 400 men and he began earning Rs 70 a day.

But, digging and ferrying stone chips on his head was not easy for Dilip.

“He frequently fell and cut himself. It was a pathetic sight. So, we thought something must be done about him,” said Kartick Ghosh, a panchayat employee and superviser of the project.

Shampa, too, could not bear to watch her father come home every evening bathed in sweat and blood. So she went to the superviser and told him that she wanted to replace Dilip. “It was touching to see the little girl come to us and want to work in place of her father,” Ghosh said.

A response came within a couple of days and Dilip was engaged to supply drinking water to labourers. District magistrate Onkar Singh Meena said Dilip’s case was unique. “He is the only blind man working under the rural job scheme in the district. I have sent a report on Dilip’s story to my superiors.”