JHARKHAND today is closer to reality than it has ever been. This
summer saw Jharkhand leaders sweat it out in Delhi while waiting
for cabinet committee meetings to decide the issue. They don't
expect the Centre to grant statehood right away. A senior leader
puts it this way, "We will probably get a union territory
consisting of the districts of south Bihar, but the Centre has to
act fast. We cannot wait any longer."
As if to underline this restlessness, south Bihar witnessed
two successful bandhs and the very effective 10-day economic
blockade in March. The virtual halt of the flow of valuable
natural resources out of the region (See box: Ravaged region),
which cost the national exchequer dearly, prodded the government
to act. Giving in to the demands of the Jharkhand leadership, the
home ministry tabled the report of the Committee on Jharkhand
Matters (COJM) two years after it was submitted.
The COJM had dismissed the demand for a separate state or
union territory and had suggested "politico-administrative
measures endowing a certain measure of autonomy" to the south
Bihar districts. They were to be governed by a Jharkhand General
Council and a Jharkhand Executive Council, on the lines of the
Darjeeling Gorkha Hill Council. The COJM proposal was rejected
outright by the Jharkhand leaders who have threatened a total
blockade if the Centre does not decide the issue soon.
This is not the first time that the Centre has been
subjected to demands for greater autonomy from various regions.
Whether it is Gorkhaland, Bodoland, Uttarakhand or Jharkhand,
angry agitations which often turn violent have conveyed the
message to the rest of the nation. Almost all of them indicate
the erosion of the community system of governance, and the
deprivation or denial of the basic rights of the people, usually
adivasis (indigenous people).
Says Jahanara Singh, widow of the founder of the Jharkhand
Party (JP), Jaipal Singh (who played hockey for India in the 1928
Olympics and died in 1970), "Normally such agitations are branded
secessionist. But we need to ask who is to blame when people
in a particular area, be it Nagaland or Jharkhand, are denied the
status of human beings and have to fight for their rights. In
Jharkhand, every effort was made to destroy the community, a
process that continues even today."
Ranchi, which may eventually be Jharkhand's capital, is like
a besieged town today. On an average, it gets power for two hours
a day. Water is scarce. Long queues at petrol pumps underline how
neglected this region is. According to the COJM report, only 26
per cent of the villages of south Bihar are electrified.
Shailendra Mahato, the outspoken, young Jharkhand Mukti
Morcha (JMM) MP, points out angrily, "Look at how we are being
victimised. The Suvarnarekha Hydroelectric Project will submerge
17,600 ha of land displacing 6,700 households from 89 villages.
The Kharkai dam will submerge 12,753 ha of land of 72 villages,
displacing 5,600 families. All our precious forests reach the saw
mills. The big industrial projects like Hatia and Bokaro tell
the same story. The people, their lands, culture, forests, were
just cast to the winds."
But what would happen if the 50-year-old Jharkhand movement
were to succeed? Will the new state become a colony of New Delhi
rather than Patna? Will the militancy of the people make their
leaders more accountable and revive the democratic traditions of
community governance and resource management?
Mahato responds to these queries by stating that the
"creation of Jharkhand will free us from external exploitation
and social oppression by the nation, but it will not solve the
problems of class exploitation. We have enemies within too". He
continues, "Our own bureaucrats, politicians and party-members
are corrupt and do not have the people's interests in mind." To
him, the real work would begin after the formation of Jharkhand.
Shibu Soren, the "guruji" of the movement and president of
JMM, says, "I was a tiger in the jungles fighting for the rights
of the people and went underground in the early 1970s for this.
My entering electoral politics is a part of that fight. When
Jharkhand comes I do not want any post but will continue to work
for the people. I will not let politics make a street dog out of
me."
Soren believes that the revival of traditional cultures is
the only hope for the adivasi. Having run night schools,
organised collective farming through baisis (village assemblies),
and ensured that the people governed their own resources and
solved their own problems, Soren is emphatic that existing
legislation must be so amended as to empower local communities.
He says he is willing to fight his own party members if
necessary, to ensure that the present anti-people laws are
changed and the forests handed over to the communities. "The
forest department is anti-forest and quite redundant in an area
where communities have always managed the forests."
But can the JMM ensure all this? Jahanara Singh expresses
her reservations, "The problem with the JMM is that there is no
effective middle-level leadership. There are the people and the
top leaders, in Delhi or Patna, while the middle-level leaders
are as bad or as good as those of the other parties." Yet she
admits that all the other parties, including the JP, is without a
mass base and are all but finished. Only the JMM has some
standing with the people.
But even the JMM appears to have failed to raise ecological
concerns in their political battle. Most of those who have
studied this region would agree with K Suresh Singh, the
director general of the Anthropological Survey of India, and a
COJM expert. According to Singh, "The Jharkhand movement has
always been a political movement for a separate state. It has no
connection with ecology."
N E Horo, president of JP, which has been in the forefront
of the struggle for separate statehood for nearly half a century
now, laments, "Unfortunately most people do not understand what
ecology is. The British and post-British imperialists saw us as
drawers of water and hewers of wood. Adivasis are still
considered beasts of burden, a process that began by indenturing
us as coolies in tea gardens, then in coal mines and now in
middle-class Delhi homes."
Horo sees the struggle for statehood as the logical
culmination of the community's fight for the restoration of its
rights for self-governance and control over its resources. "Is
this not ecology?" he asks.
The ecological, social and economic history of the region
vindicates Horo who, like Soren, believes in restituting
community rights over resources, but unlike him has clear, well-
documented plans. The JP drew up a forest policy as early as 1983
and staunchly believes that "traditional panchayats are better
than statutory panchayats, because the latter by their very size,
rule out meeting community interests". Panchayat elections have
not been held in Bihar since 1978.
Under Horo's leadership, the JP fought in the 1970s for
people's rights to obtain royalties for collecting tendu leaves
and other forest produce like sal seeds, kusum, and mahua.
Unfortunately, their effort to replace intermediaries led to the
formation of the Forest Development Corporation in 1976, which
Horo characterises as "another den of thieves". The party's
"direct action" in 1978 for the restoration of forest rights
involved the people uprooting all the trees planted by the forest
department on community land.
Allegations, denials and counter-allegations cloud the
issue. According to Horo, their month-long programme was meant
more to shake up the department rather than destroy the forests.
All precious trees were to be spared. However, the campaign did
not have the desired effect because, he alleges, "the JMM entered
the scene in league with the department and the contractors, and
made a lot of money by cutting down big trees, including sal,
while the villagers watched".
Soren contemptuously dismisses Horo's allegation as "a
tissue of lies, to malign me". According to him, the JP started a
destructive programme, which it could not control. In fact, Soren
takes great pains to state that not only does he consider trees
to be the "bank account" of the adivasi, but that all the JMM
cadres "have been instructed to ensure that in their areas a
thousand trees are planted every year".
On his part, Horo says that his party has been constantly
agitating for the restoration of tribal lands. If Jharkhand
comes, Horo promises to "promote small- and medium-scale
industries based on local forest and agro-products". To which
Soren enigmatically replies, "Well, let a thousand flowers
bloom. I hope they don't turn out to be cauliflowers."
Whatever the political rhetoric of the leadership, the
ground reality seems very different. "Jharkhand is like a cake,"
says Ratan Tirkey, assistant director of Ranchi's Bindarai
Institute for Research Study and Action (BIRSA). "Some come
hoping to get a slice, some for the crumbs, while others are
drawn just by the flavour."
Indeed, politicians of all shades, have jumped onto the
bandwagon for a separate state, be it in the form of a Vananchal
or Vanrajya. Says public interest litigation lawyer and
"advocate general" of Jharkhand, Rashmi Katayayan, "Current
political parties and the leadership has done nothing either in
terms of people's rights or in relation to the environment and
development."
Surprisingly, despite the fact that eminent anthropologists,
development experts and tribal leaders have understood its
problems, the Jharkhand issue has not been linked to the erosion
of community rights nor the solution sought in terms of
restoring them. Horo is apologetic, "Practical politics requires
many compromises. We have a people's forest policy, formulated
as early as 1985 and a policy for the people, to restore the
traditional community governance system. But lately we are
concentrating on the statehood issue as none of our aspirations
can be fulfilled otherwise."
But the banter of the leaders does not mask their confusion
about what the policy of the future state should be regarding
forests, land, industrialisation or even cultural revival. The
suave Bindeswari Prasad Kesri, of Ranchi University's department
of tribal languages, who is also a convenor of the Jharkhand
Coordination Committee (JCC), shows off the akhara (small
stadium) built in his department "to revive traditional culture".
The cement structure is almost grotesque in comparison to the
indigenous adivasi structures.
The JMM can only succeed through fear. Horo comments, "The
JMM started as a Marxist front led by A K Roy of Dhanbad, but now
it is a wing of the Congress. It consists of power-hungry wolves
who thrive on rangdari abwabs (cesses charged by bullies)." Women
head-loaders in Ranchi bazaar shy away from cameras or reporters,
but confirm that they pay JMM cadres "for even the right to sit
on the pavement".
The Jharkhand Chamber of Commerce backs the JMM to the hilt.
But a member, Chandra Mohan Kapoor, who owns the posh Hotel
Chinar in Ranchi, says, "The JMM will form a government at least
once, but I do not know what will happen after that."
Mahato denies charges of corruption rather weakly, "My boys
are better than those of the other parties, but in an atmosphere
that is corrupt, who can remain a saint?" But Soren dismisses
the charges as "idle rumours to break the movement".
The present movement has placed a lot of importance on the
"revival of Jharkhandi culture". But, as historian Indu Dhan,
principal of Ranchi College and a former vice-chancellor of
Magadh University, asks, "What culture are they talking about?
Jharkhandi culture is not just grass-skirt-clad women singing and
dancing as tribals are shown in Hindi films and as some of the
present leaders who lead dance troupes to Festivals of India
seem to think. It is a combination of forest, land and women."
The women's question has been clearly neglected by the
movement. Jahanara Singh says that even in her husband's days the
women's question was not given much importance, on the grounds
that "adivasi women are happy with their roles and do not have
any problems". She regrets the lack of efforts to conscientise
women which, to Indu Dhan, is "one of the major reasons for the
poor performance of the movement so far".
According to local surveys, women do some 60 per cent of the
total family labour of gathering and roughly 70 per cent of this
is devoted to firewood collection. While ecological destruction
leads to a decline in general standards of nutrition and health,
women are more directly and immediately affected being the
providers for the family.
During A K Roy's era, women did briefly assert their rights
to economic independence and liberation from male oppression both
within the family and outside. Women participated in JMM
campaigns to seize land, harvest paddy on land appropriated by
money-lenders, recover pawned articles and took part in village
council deliberations.
These village councils were very democratic and men and
women participated equally. These councils were not, however,
institutions that decided the course of the movement. Women were
not represented in the higher echelons of the party. Thus, while
they participated at the level of mobilisation and action, they
were not able to influence the course of the movement.
Today, in most parties be it the All Jharkhand Students
Union (AJSU) or the Hul Jharkhand Kranti Dal (HJKD), women do not
hold key positions. The fledgling Jharkhand Mahila Mukti Samity
(JMMS) has had its wings clipped with the ascent of the JMM. Most
leaders hold forth on gender equality in adivasi society, with
allusions to khorposh (maintenance rights) to land and crops
granted to widows or unmarried daughters. But this institution
serves local purposes because it keeps the land within the
village and yet take care of the needy.
What is never mentioned is that often the khorposhdars were
burnt or stigmatised and therefore marginalised. Even the debates
initiated by the JMM in 1987 on the issue of women's rights to
land seem to have been submerged in the rising rhetoric over a
separate statehood.
But ordinary people are not just passive observers. Vincent
Lakra, the soft-spoken treasurer of the Xavier Institute of
Social Studies (XISS), Ranchi, who filed a writ against the Koel
Karo project in the Supreme Court in 1984, states unequivocally,
"We need a separate state. The JMM can get that for us. But if
they do not fulfill our aspirations, we shall dispense with
them."
Lawrence Kerkatta, a young adivasi from south Bihar, who is
visiting his sisters working as maids in Delhi says, "All our
huls (revolts) were small compared to this ulugulan (smouldering
ashes -- a protracted struggle). We shall not let it die till we
get the right to decide our future." Lawrence is a potential
oustee of Koel Karo.
A statue of Birsa Munda, who led a revolt against the
British at the turn of the century, built by the Heavy
Engineering Corporation ( one of the biggest eco-destructors of
the area), welcomes you to Ranchi. "The statue," says Katayayan,
"symbolises the plight of the average Jharkhandi today:
manacled hands and bare feet walking mutely past the remnants of
a forest-based culture lost with the denudation of the forests.
Only a log is left behind for the adivasi."
Will the movement and its leaders unbind the Birsas and give
them back what they have lost? Katayayan's cryptic comment, "The
movement is not a mass movement, yet the masses are moving", is
borne out by villages like Raghunathpur (See box: 'We can rule
ourselves'), where the community has managed to organise itself
and its environment. There's hope yet that the people will
eventually win, in spite of their leaders.
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