Man On A Lifeboat

Hapless workers in the Gulf have a guardian angel for bad times.

- M.S. Shanker in Hyderabad

SOCIAL service requires fortit­ude and selflessness in equal measure. These attributes Patk­uri Basanth Reddy possesses in abundance, for his qualities were forged in the painstaking journey of becoming a ‘saviour’ from being a  ‘victim’.  Once a migrant cons­truction labourer in the Gulf,  today Reddy is often a ray of hope for hundr­ eds of workers in West Asia—in Saudi Arabia, Oman, Qatar and Abu Dhabi.

A farmer’s son in Manoharabad village in Telangana, Basanth Reddy was compe­lled to sign up as a construction worker. “My family was in distress. My debt­ridden parents struggled to sell whatever they could produce on their smallholding to feed me and my two brothers. The pov­erty was unbearable. Those days there were agencies who recruited construction labour for Gulf countries. I borrowed Rs 70,000 and paid an agent, who sent me to Bahrain,” he recalls.