Heaven Shelter in Alipurduar is home to 87 homeless people, but its survival depends largely on the personal finances and persistence of its 54-year-old founder, Saju Talukdar. He spends around ₹3 lakh every month to run the facility, while the district administration has helped provide a road, drinking water and electricity. The arrangement reveals a larger urban problem: people without stable homes may be visible in railway stations, bus stops and roadside spaces, yet the responsibility for their care can still fall on individuals rather than institutions.
Talukdar’s shelter did not begin as a formal social-service project. His efforts started with collecting used clothes from households across north Bengal and distributing them among people living around closed and sick tea gardens. The work brought him into contact with people facing more severe forms of distress, including those who were disabled, abandoned or without a place to live.
In 2017, Talukdar met Budu Oraon in Nagrakata. Oraon was incapacitated from the waist down and living in a passenger shed. Talukdar brought him home. Other distressed people whom he encountered at railway stations and bus stops soon joined him, eventually making his house too small to accommodate them. A house obtained under a government housing scheme gave the group temporary space, but the shelter’s needs continued to expand.
The sequence is important because it shows how informal care networks often emerge before a structured support system becomes visible. Talukdar did not set out with land, a large facility or institutional funding. He responded to people he encountered in public spaces and gradually became responsible for their shelter, food and basic care. The resulting facility, Heaven Shelter, now serves 87 people, but the financial model remains highly dependent on its founder.
That dependence is the central institutional fact in the story. Talukdar said he spends about ₹3 lakh a month to operate the shelter and described the burden as substantial. The report does not identify a recurring government grant, a formal operating agreement or a dedicated institutional funding mechanism for the facility. It records instead a combination of personal expenditure, local goodwill and limited administrative assistance.
The district administration’s role has nevertheless been significant. It took the initiative to build a road to the site and arrange drinking water and power supply. Four local residents offered Talukdar a parcel of land, while another well-wisher provided an ambulance. These interventions made the shelter more viable, but they also underline the fragmented nature of its support structure. Land, access, utilities, transport and monthly operations have come from different actors, with no single arrangement described as responsible for the whole system.
For residents without homes, this fragmentation can have direct consequences. A shelter requires more than a building. It needs access, water, electricity, transport and a dependable operating budget. Talukdar’s experience shows that even when a physical site is found, sustaining a facility for dozens of residents creates a continuing financial obligation. The ₹3 lakh monthly expenditure is not a one-time construction cost; it is a recurring requirement tied to keeping people housed.
The story also connects homelessness to the geography of north Bengal. Talukdar first worked among needy people living around closed and sick tea gardens, and later found distressed people at railway stations and bus stops. These locations are not simply backdrops. They are places where people without secure housing become visible to the public, often after family support, employment or physical ability has broken down.
The account does not establish how many homeless people live across north Bengal, how many shelters operate in the region or whether Heaven Shelter is linked to a broader government programme. Those gaps matter. A single shelter cannot be treated as a measure of the entire homelessness system, just as one administrator’s support cannot be assumed to represent a permanent public framework. What the available evidence does establish is narrower but significant: 87 people are currently dependent on a facility whose operations are being carried by an individual and a network of local supporters.
Talukdar’s own background helps explain why he became involved. He said he had to leave school because he could not afford a uniform and later worked with his father, a tailor, who struggled to support a family of nine. Talukdar then took driving lessons and bought a second-hand car for commercial work. His decision to collect used garments followed an encounter with unclothed children playing on the road.
This personal history is relevant to the shelter’s institutional story because it shows how lived experience can generate public action. Talukdar recognised deprivation through circumstances that were familiar to him. But the same history also raises a difficult question about sustainability: when a public need is addressed by someone acting from personal conviction, what happens when the individual can no longer carry the financial, administrative or emotional burden?
The shelter’s development suggests that local administration can help convert voluntary action into a functioning public facility. A road, water connection and power supply are basic requirements, but they are also forms of institutional recognition. Without them, the land offered by local residents would have had limited practical value. The reported assistance demonstrates how modest public interventions can support community-led responses to homelessness.
At the same time, infrastructure support is different from operational support. Building access and arranging utilities may enable a shelter to function, but they do not necessarily cover food, staffing, healthcare, maintenance or the everyday needs of 87 residents. The source material does not specify how these costs are met. That absence is itself a reminder that physical infrastructure can be easier to identify than the recurring services needed to make housing secure.
Talukdar has also helped reunite missing people with their families. This expands the shelter’s role beyond accommodation. It acts as a point of contact for people separated from their households and as an intermediary between vulnerable individuals and their families. Yet the report does not say how these reunifications are documented, how many have taken place or whether the shelter works with a formal agency for such cases.
The account therefore presents Heaven Shelter as both a refuge and an informal civic institution. It provides a place to live, connects vulnerable people to basic services and sometimes helps restore family links. Its work overlaps with housing, social protection, public health and local governance, even though the report describes no formal structure bringing these responsibilities together.
The occasion on which Talukdar’s story was reported adds another layer. He was invited to present certificates and scholarships at the fourth edition of The Telegraph School Awards for Excellence 2026 North Bengal, held at the Birla Divya Jyoti School Auditorium at Uttarayon in Matigara, Siliguri, on September 28 and 29. He said he felt honoured when called to the dais.
That recognition places a private act of care in a public setting, but it does not resolve the structural question raised by the shelter. Recognition can acknowledge an individual’s contribution; it cannot by itself provide a recurring funding model or clarify institutional responsibility. The available report confirms the shelter’s scale and the assistance it has received, but leaves open how its future operations will be secured.
Heaven Shelter’s experience ultimately shows the limits of treating homelessness as a matter of individual charity. Talukdar’s intervention has created a safe space for 87 people, and local residents and the district administration have helped make the site functional. But the shelter’s dependence on personal resources also indicates how easily essential urban support can remain outside a stable public system.
The evidence supports a clear conclusion without establishing a broader policy failure in numerical terms: a large group of vulnerable residents is being housed through a locally built arrangement whose financial foundation rests heavily on one person. The developments that deserve monitoring are whether the shelter receives continuing institutional support, how its monthly needs are met and whether its experience leads to a more coordinated response for people living without homes across north Bengal.
