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| A State of Misery |
| Saturday November 28, 2009 |
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| Geeta Koda |
| Ten years is a short time in political history. But not when people vote for the third time to elect the seventh government in less than a decade. Jharkhand votes this month - 24 days to be precise for a five phase election. The state is fast turning into a squandered promise : ostensibly created to carve political space for tribals but now turning into the most intense arena of tribal unrest. It does not help that an independent MLA turned Chief Minister is being probed in a 4000 crore scam. Madhu Koda, Mining, MoUs, Maoism - on this page, in the next few weeks, a series of travel posts from Jharkhand. Madhu Koda and Mimic Men Train travel through Singhbhum is easy. That's if you are a lump of iron ore. Every day, an assembly line of 7000 wagons and more moves out of India's richest iron ore mining belt making it a high volume high profit rail route. For humans though, there is just one daily packed train, the Tatanagar Gua Passenger. It starts from Tatanagar, or Jamshedpur, at 8:15 in the morning, and in quick succession, in less than three hours, provides a bioscope style slideshow : dull grey industrial wastelands, alternating with patches of green, breaking into red brown dust, ending at a reddened cum blackened station of Gua, a small mining town. But the towns being named on the train were different. Bombay, Jamnagar, Barmer, Bangalore. Two young men sat facing each other, swapping mobile phones, and the merits of locations. Dressed identically in low cost low waist jeans with silver embroidery, Rakesh introduced himself as a 'fabricator', and Arun a 'welder'. Both had crisscrossed the country in search for work in factories and mines. Their paths intersected in Barmer, where they became friends, and in that utterly unpredictable and risky venture that poor workers in this country routinely undertake, they were enroute to Noamundi, another mining town, responding to the call of a contractor and the promise of better pay. 'I could earn close to 7,000 rupees as a fabricator. Arun could make 4000 rupees. A fabricator does more skilled work than a welder and is better paid.' Rakesh spoke more easily and confidently. He explained : he was from Balia in Uttar Pradesh while Arun was from Chaibasa in Singhbhum. And Arun was Adivasi. That Arun was Adivasi was meant to explain a lot. 'You won't find many Adivasi boys at industrial sites. They don't have the skills for such work, at least not the specialized tasks. Some of them can't even speak good Hindi.' Arun nodded, and almost apologetically added, 'Most men from my village have never travelled out. They don't want to make it big. 'Unka bada aadmi nahi banana hai.' Bada aadmi. Perhaps that's what Madhu Koda wanted to become. The son of an Adivasi mine worker, he grew up in Gua, and like young Arun, started out as a welder on a daily wage. Along the way, he got involved in the local mine workers union, a connection he still loves to flaunt as his political baptism. Today, the humble mine worker turned chief minister is facing investigations into graft, but also simultaneously campaigning for his wife's first election. Geeta Koda is young. Just 26 years old. Born into a mine worker's family, like her husband, she too grew up in a mining town, Kiriburu, scenically located on the top of a hill on the border with Orissa. She studied till 'intermediate'. And then she got married. Her political experience is zilch, but sitting on the edge of the sofa, in her marital home in Patahatu village, demurely but confidently, she tells us, 'I will work on Sir's guidelines'. Madhu Koda is more aggressive. 'So what if she has no political experience? No one is born with political experience. And is Madhu Koda the first politician in the country to field his wife?' He does not say it explicitly, but Koda implies : If others can do it, so can we. And in this sentiment lies the seed of much turmoil. Historically, the tribals here may have remained stable and steady in their lands and forests, showing little desire to move out, but in the last century and a half, the modern world has been moving in, first gradually and now in greater acceleration, creating a class of Adivasis who like Naipaulian mimic men have internalized the culture, economics, and politics of the 'dikus', the outsiders, and are now competing with them, to produce tragic comic outcomes. 'We are ashamed an Adivasi has been found to be so corrupt. Worse still, a Ho Adivasi of Singhbhum.' A prominent activist Rakesh repeated what I had already heard from many others in Chaibasa. And so, I knew what would follow : 'But maybe he got caught because he is an Adivasi. He was not clever enough to cover his tracks'. The innocent tribal ensnared by modernity. The narrative - with its truth, fact, fiction, flaws - is out in full force in Jharkhand. But is Koda's Adivasi identity relevant to the corruption scam? Are leaders like Koda the face of a failed tribal leadership in Jharkhand? NEXT IN THE SERIES : The Tribal Paradox - why is a state led by four tribal chief ministers turning into an arena of tribal unrest? |
Supriya Sharma is a roving reporter.
