Even dissident JD(U) legislators here say that chief minister Nitish Kumar’s political position with the Mahadalits (“super dalits”) and the ati-pichra (most backward), the new social categories he has created to consolidate his electoral position in return for benefits directed at them, was unassailable.
The view enjoys some acceptance, as I saw in the state capital and several North Bihar towns, and is at the back of assumptions made about the possible return of Nitish as chief minister. The conditions of the very poor in the rural areas right off Patna should, however, give the chief minister pause.
At the Musahar Toli (the neglected section of a village where the traditionally rat-eating Musahar community, the poorest of the dalits who depend only on physical labour, live) in the Lakhanpar panchayat of Punpun, barely 20 kilometres from Patna, a defiant group — mostly women, but also some men — surround me as I explain I am there to know about the benefits they are receiving from the government.
They are loud and angry when I tell them they were meant to receive land for small houses, a hundred days of work in the year per family under the NREGA (a Central scheme), and 50 per cent reservations for women in the panchayat.
“The Kurmi landowners here give us nothing. Now they destroy the weeds through pesticides, so we don’t get work as grass-cutters,” they shout back. “The mukhiya and the MLA are both Majhi (the last name Musahars often give themselves) like us, but they are thieves. The BDO (block development officer) and the CO (circle officer) ask us to go to the “bichauliya” (intermediary — in this case contractor) when we approach them for work under NREGA. We didn’t get more than 10 or 12 days work last year. The rate was about Rs 100 per day.”
A middle-aged woman is especially angry. “Do you want to see what the local ration shop sells us?” Her daughter dives into the broken mud-walled shelter, stepping over the open sewer, and returns with a handful of rice in a thali. Seeing the filthy stuff makes my stomach turn. The stench from the “nali” (drain) doesn’t help. The rice grains are almost black in colour and appear broken and round, not long. They seem to be mixed with dirt and dead white worms — called “pillu” in Bihar — that enter grain piles.
I ask about the 50 per cent reservations for women under panchayati raj about which I head heard much. Now the Mahadalits nearly mock me. I beat a hasty retreat, uttering inanities.
The story is not so different at the next Musahar village at Allauddin Chowk near by. But the houses are somewhat better. “These were built when Lalu was chief minister from the Indira Awas Yojna funds,” someone informs me. There are loud complaints about lack of work. “I would happily lift stones if only someone gave us even that to do,” an old woman pipes up. The wages for local farm work here is 1.25 kilos of rice for four hours, but usually it is “masoori” dal, not rice.
At the approach of this village I meet a community of “ati-pichra” men and women (mainly smiths of various types and carriers). They also show me the rotten rice they eat. “Where’s the work?” they ask when I try to talk about this.
My next stop is Sammanchak, a mixed village of “ravidas” (chamars) and Majhi communities. A group of men and a woman, whose husband could be dying of TB, says last year no one in the village found even one day’s employment under NREGA. The youngsters go off to Delhi and Punjab for work, and the others look to Patna for daily wage employment. They don’t get rations every month at the government shop, they say. At all my stops, I ask if they’ll re-elect their MLA, who is their caste man (Majhi). Mostly they say “no”. But there is also a voice of caution, “We have small minds here and people sell their vote for a bottle of country liquor.”
Tomorrow: The happy side