The road of change

Published : Jun 09, 2001 00:00 IST

A view from a West Bengal village.

"THIRTY days ago you would have been welcomed by green fields, 15 days ago by golden fields," says Gaur Hari Panja, the former Pradhan (chairperson) of the Narugram gram panchayat in Barddhaman district. With the boro paddy harvest just in, and the pre-monsoon showers settling the summer dust, the picturesque countryside in this part of West Bengal appears to be in a state of post-harvest well-being and repose. The road to Narugram, one of the 22 villages that form the Narugram gram panchayat, was built by the Barddhaman Zilla Parishad (District Council). Through expanses of harvested rice fields it winds, shaded by an avenue of trees planted by the Zilla Parishad as part of its social forestry programme.

The district has a history of struggle (indeed, before and after "the red flag came" are common points of reference in village conversation), and is still a communist stronghold. The Left-led agrarian movements of the 1950s and 1960s resulted in structured and directed social and economic change under the panchayat raj system, first established in 1978. The major achievement of 30 years of panchayat administration has been land reform. Land held in excess of land ceilings was redistributed and share-croppers were registered under Operation Barga. In Narugram alone, 64 acres were distributed to 278 landless families and 43 share-cropper households became owners of their land.

The pace and character of the transformation that has occurred in people's lives in the last 20 to 30 years emerge in conversations with persons of Narugram, particularly the generation that has traversed the road of change.

On a late May morning there is little agricultural activity in the fields in the village. A group of women and children bathe in the placid green water of the village tank. Madan Hasta, 37, is from a Scheduled Tribe family that has done relatively well for itself in the last 10 years. "We were a landless family," he said, "but I now have four bighas of land that I bought over the last ten years." His daily wage at harvest time is Rs.30 in cash and two kg of rice. Hasta's wife, Aroti Hansdar, said her wage is the same.

Uday Shankar, a school teacher and zonal committee secretary of the CPI(M), speaks of how he went from house to house in 1980 urging parents to send their children to school. "It was an achievement then if 20 children were in Class V. Today I have 125 children in Class V," Uday Shankar said. All the children in Narugram are now in school, and the Village Education Committee helps ensure that they stay there. Sakir Santra is a 70-year-old basket weaver and former agricultural worker who now owns a small plot of crop land. He could not send his son to school: "How could I? There was so much poverty in those days and it was all a matter of survival." Today, his granddaughter is in school: "I never imagined that a granddaughter of mine would go to school."

Five years ago Pottaron Malik, 38, was a daily-wage worker. He received half a bigha of land when land was redistributed. He recalls how in his father's time, to avoid starvation, the children were made to pick coconuts to eat. In a one-roomed shed built by the panchayat for the Swarnajayanta Self Help scheme for women, Meera Malik, Shikha Malik, Chandana Pal and Protima Lohar pack puffed rice into plastic packets for sale. They also make batik saris and scarves, and do tie-and-dye work. "We make a profit of around Rs.700 to Rs.800 a month for the group on this work," said Chandana, as she deftly sealed a bulging packet of puffed rice.

The present Pradhan of the gram panchayat is 26-year-old Kartik Santra, a graduate in Sanskrit Honours. Santra is from a poor Dalit family that received one bigha of land during land redistribution. Sitting in the newly built panchayat office with a group of past and present members of the panchayat and other people, he speaks quietly about his gram panchayat's recent achievements. After four heavy duty tubewells and 32 low duty wells were dug, there has been substantial change in the agricultural landscape of the village. A new captive-fishing project earns the gram panchayat an income of Rs.52,000 a year. Much has been done, he says, but much more remains to be done.

Gurupada Hansdar, 72, speaks of then - "before the red flag came" - and now. Life is very different now: "Our working hours are less, our wages are higher, and there is food in our stomachs, we are not hungry." He is still poor: "I am a poor man, but in those days I was very very poor." The essence of change, although, goes deeper: "I am a human being now; I was not recognised as one in those days."

With inputs from Suhrid Sankar Chattopadhyay.
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