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IN A small village 220 kilometres north of Kolkata, a war is being fought to build a village road and to save a school.
The enemy we face is a time-tested array of new bargadars, old zamindars, party apparatchiks and hired hoodlums.
Our soldiers are the small school staff, some working children, and their unlettered, landless and terrified parents. We pretend to be larger-than-life for they must not lose faith in our ability to win. Our only hope is the higher ranks of a district administration, miraculously upholding the rule of law against all odds. There is a police camp in the school to protect us from reprisals. In this grimy little war, no outsiders will mourn if we lose or notice if we win.
It is raining outside. The 'road' is once again a swamp of cloying mud. Its deeply rutted tracks bar even police jeeps from entering. This road is the unifying symbol of our struggle. Its condition is a daily reminder of unrestrained corruption vitiating 24 years of panchayati raj. While routine pilfering of development resources happens everywhere, Bengal's corrosive and all-pervasive politicisation makes it so much more difficult to rectify. Here a Left Front local committee secretary at the village level is as powerful as a minister in Kolkata.
For 25 years, this political culture has damaged West Bengal's Left by breeding mindless unionism, retarding industrial progress, destroying work ethic, eliminating accountability and fuelling unemployment.
Government jobs are among the few alternatives left. Schools are a particular favourite and the Left Front is run at the grassroots by teachers whose political preoccupation as party whole-timers has richly contributed to the crisis in education.
Three years have passed since my wife and I came to live and work in Murshidabad and Katna, the village where she was born. We set up a primary school to create equal learning opportunities for working children. Then, in mid-1999, I sacked a relative of hers for cheating and theft.
Abu Asgar Siddique heads the powerful Mollicks of Katna, a clan of landed interests. He reacted by hiring four contract killers to kill us for Rs 60,000.
On August 7, 1999, we narrowly escaped death when two bombs exploded at the school premises. I filed an FIR against, but the police responded tardily. When Siddique eventually showed up at the thana, a local party LCS went along for protection.
Next, our school fence was uprooted, its playground ploughed and planted with mustard seeds. One of the assassins reappeared as a bargadar whose tilling rights had been "usurped"! Within 24 hours, the block land reforms officer recorded testimonies of false "witnesses" and completed investigations. Were it not for the prompt intervention of H.K. Dwivedi, then district magistrate, our fate would have been sealed. Under Bengal's land reform laws, we could have contested in court till the cows came home.
The hired killers then publicly turned up outside Siddique's house to settle accounts. Again, it was 'Bani Master', a local CPI(M) teacher who brokered a discounted rate of Rs 20,000.
Two years went by. The school grew to over 270 children from seven villages. Many found the road to be a problem. We went door-to-door seeking support for repairs. Everyone promised, but no one delivered. That is how on June 10 we decided to build the road ourselves using free labour from some students' parents.
The village clapped from the sidelines. Even the local CPI(M) panchayat pradhan, Abu Bakkar, issued a signed notification prohibiting heavy tractor-trolleys while repairs were on. But the Mollicks of Katna saw such mobilisation of the landless as a direct challenge. Party pressure was reactivated.
On June 13, angered by volunteers peacefully blocking their loaded vehicles, the Mollicks coerced the pradhan into violating his own order. Bakkar joined CPI(M) member Bonodev Karmakar, Siddique and others in beating up our students' parents and forcing the tractor through. Worst of all, Bakkar lodged a complaint accusing his victims of assaulting him.
It was Hari Kusumakar, a young subdivisional police officer at nearby Kandi, who saved the day. Abu Bakkar was arrested and released. The local CPI(M) took to the streets against the administration's "highhandedness". When protests failed, Siddique commissioned Bakkar's brother Chanda, a notorious criminal, to target us. Meanwhile, police pressure on an earlier warrant forced Bakkar back into judicial custody.
All would still have been lost if senior CPI(M) leaders had not intervened with strong disapproval of cadre involvement in this sordid saga. But how long can petty miscreants be restrained?
I sit in my school reading newspaper reports of Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee exhorting district magistrates to act positively. His urgency communicates awareness of the rot damaging West Bengal's development potential. In our own small way, we share his party's ideology and fight the same battle.
But to be a 'third force' in Indian
politics, the Left needs more than just 'non-communal' characters to recommend
itself. The struggle to make the world a better place for all requires
much more, Mr Bhattacharjee.
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