The innovative ludo board. A Telegraph picture

Siliguri, Dec. 26: These days, whenever Madhabi Barman of Buraganj (near Khoribari) has to tell a would-be mother how to take care of herself, she starts with a game of snakes and ladders or ludo.

Barman, a worker with the Integrated Child Development Scheme, is a volunteer for the Mother and Child programme of the Bhoruka Public Welfare Trust. The NGO, which works with women’s issues in areas near the India-Nepal border, has improvised the age-old board games to spread awareness among rural women on precautions that need to be taken before and after childbirth.

“We have got messages written on the squares of snakes and ladders and pictures in the ludo board,” said Tamali Dutta, the in-charge of Bhoruka’s Naxalbari centre. “The order of the do’s and don’ts that a pregnant mother has to keep in mind follows the order of the game on the board.”

The two traditional games are available in a single set.

Thus in a game of ludo, once a player reaches the square with a picture of fruits and green vegetables, she will find an arrow directing her to the next square which has the picture of a healthy baby or a healthy mother. Similarly, the square showing breast feeding leads her to the next square, which also shows a healthy baby. At the end of the game, the “home” where the players rest their pieces, has the picture of a happy, healthy family.

“Thus if you follow all the rules, you will end up having a happy family,” Madhabi tells her partners as the games come to an end.

In snakes and ladders, if a player is able to reach the 10th square standing for “delivery of a child at hospital or maternity home, breast-feeding and immunisation against various diseases”, she gets a long ladder to take her straight to the 84th square that says “disease-free healthy mother and child”.

On the other hand, if a player reaches Square 83 (“unhygienic environment”), a red-and-white snake is sure to gobble her up and bring her down to Square 21 (“Chances of opportunistic infection”). With five snakes and eight ladders, the game is a sum-total of all that a would-be mother has to keep in mind during and after pregnancy.

“The game is part of our drive to spread awareness among rural women on pregnancy and child care,” Dutta said. “The game has been developed by our experts at our headquarters in Calcutta under a project sponsored by the European Commission. It is a fun-way of spreading awareness.

“We have started distributing the game for free among the village women through our volunteers — we have one for every 40 families — and also at our meetings,” Dutta said. “The response is so overwhelming that women are walking up to our centre asking for their copies of the game. So much so that even other agencies have approached us to take the help of our game to communicate with women in their programmes.”

Dinesh, Madhabi’s husband, also a voluntary worker with Bhoruka, says he is trying to get the men play the board games as well. “The men, too, should know about their duties and responsibilities towards their wives during pregnancy.”