Acres Of Anger

The zamindars of Champaran are a cruel reflection of Bihar's clinging feudal reality

Many rivers run through Champaran, East and West. The Gandak, the Bun Gandak, Panch Nadi, Lalbagia, Koja and Teur.

It is a lush green, rich agricultural district—a land worth fighting for. A land that once drew the British, who acquired it in 1765 and set up their notorious indigo plantations. Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi travelled here in 1917, eventually launching the Champaran movement against the planters, the first experiment in Gandhian mass mobilisation on Indian soil. Thousands of years earlier, another colossus, King Ashoka, too had traversed this land. One of the finest Ashokan pillars still stands in Lauriya village, West Champaran, on what was then the road from Pataliputra to Nepal.

Today, no one travels on this road at night. For Champaran is now a microcosm of all that has gone wrong in Bihar. It has the highest crime rate in the state. There are dacoits, bandits and bahubalis (strongmen). The Maoists too have slowly spread across the border from Nepal. But at the heart of the region's problems are its most respectable citizens: the landlords of Champaran. Under the Permanent Settlement of the British, revenue collectors were established as zamindars and in Champaran alone there were many 'states' run by them: Domariya state, Shikarpur state and Bilaspur state, to name just a few. Decades after the abolition of zamindari and over 30 years after the passing of the Land Ceiling Act in Bihar, the landed here still cling on to their estates.

They are all reasonable men. Educated and civilised. With children often settled in the big Indian metros or abroad. With relatives in politics, the bureaucracy and, most vitally, the judiciary. They say their world is under attack since the reign of Laloo Prasad Yadav began in Patna 15 years ago. They do indeed face the problems of the rich.

The road to Domariya leads up to the huge gates of Ajay Kumar Shahi's home. The villagers say the family is fabulously rich and owns orchards, cold storages and hotels. Yet on a cool verandah decorated with hunting trophies, Shahi laments his changing world: "Earlier people thought it was their duty to work for us. Now they fight over wages and no one comes to my gates unless they want something." Shahi's elder son Rananjay helps look after the estate and also won the post of mukhiya in the panchayat elections. Yet he increasingly spends time outside Bihar. His younger son Dhananjay works in a Delhi law firm.

Alone and determined to hold on to his lands ("if I had any other income I would leave"), Shahi has himself become something of an expert lawyer. "If they try to impose the land ceiling law, naturally we will resist. The legal battle goes on from the district to the high court to the Supreme Court." A minor inconvenience of being a zamindar is court appearances several times a month. Moreover, the last collector of West Champaran, Ravi Parmar, posted there from 2000 to June 2003, had been a particular nightmare for the landlords. He issued "parchas" on several hundred acres of their lands, distributing it among the landless. He also filed several cases under the Minimum Wages Act and Abolition of Bonded Labour Act. Shahi says: "I got a stay on the land he had distributed but there are now problems with those who claim it."

The same tale is told by the Verma family of Shikarpur, where land has been divided between 14 members. Says Alok Verma, who also runs local cinema halls besides managing land: "The cases go on. We are also well armed to protect ourselves. Yet, the Maoists shot at my brother, missing him but hitting a government official. We now think twice before going to our farmhouses near the Nepal border." The Vermas have all been educated in public schools in Patna, universities in Delhi. Related to the late Rajendra Prasad, they are well connected in politics and the bureaucracy.

They also present a fascinating case study of how the zamindars constantly reinvent themselves.When Bihar had its first panchayat elections two years ago, seven Vermas contested and are now ensconced in the three-tier panchayati raj system. Dilip Verma is a sitting BJP MLA but is currently standing on a SP ticket. Says he: "Our family has been in all political parties except the rjd. We don't get respect there."

A few hours drive away is the Lal Kothi of the Rai family of Bilaspur estate. Chandra Mohan Rai is a three-term BJP MLA. Adjoining the Lal Kothi is the Peeli Kothi, where another branch of the family is now settled. Peeli Kothi's Vishwa Mohan Sharma, a Congress mla, was industry minister in Laloo's government. Clearly, this is a family with political clout. Yet their problems have been mounting. First, as Chandra Mohan Rai elaborates, the younger generation is no longer interested in the ancestral lands. "My son is a solicitor in Delhi. He panics when you mention caste to him. My daughter is an mba in Mumbai. Her husband works in Reliance Infocomm. They don't want to fight the battles to keep the land."

And the legal battles have to be fought. Rai too complains about the former collector. "Between 2001 to 2003, several false cases were filed against me. Over 178 acres of family land was wrongly distributed. I was wrongly accused of not giving the minimum wages and even charged for atrocities against Dalits." Agriculture, he says, is no longer as productive. "The labour makes unreasonable demands. Then they go off to work in other states. They think it is a picnic. They return with a transistor in one hand and a suitcase in another."

Behind the Lal Kothi is a railway line. Everyday the Jannayak Express from Darbhanga to Amritsar passes, packed with Bihari labour, on the roof, the seats, the floor. Thousands leave everyday in search of the better wages other states offer. But most still stay. And in the end they do work on the estates for pathetic wages.

In Champaran, no one pays the minimum wage. The Vermas say they give five kilos of rough paddy for a day's work. Villagers say they actually get two and a half kilos. Rai says the wages have gone up to Rs 35. But district officials say people rarely get paid more than Rs 20.

The "nightmare collector", Ravi Parmar, is now on deputation to the Centre. Parmar says that when he arrived in Champaran, the minimum wage was Rs 62, yet even contractors working on government schemes were paying Rs 20. The zamindars usually paid in kind. Women would hold out their pallus and a few kilos of rough paddy would be given by the estate munshis. Parmar says he distributed 7,000 acres of land among the landless. "But I am not hopeful. In some instances, the landless gave the parchas back to the zamindars. In other cases, they have used the courts to fight back. These are people with no respect for the law. From the revenue official to the high courts, they have connections everywhere. I could only make a difference while I was there."

Under the ceiling laws, land is divided into six categories depending on its fertility. An individual can only own up to 15 acres of the most fertile and 30 acres of the least fertile. Clearly, all the old landed families violate the law, owning hundreds if not thousands of acres of lands. Indeed, Laloo Yadav's biggest failure and the reason for Bihar's anarchy is the failure to implement the land laws. Yet, as Parmar says, "Laloo never succumbed to pressure to remove me. Yet the political will to push through genuine reform is lacking." In a nutshell, the old system is breaking down, but new institutions have not been created.

In the Jehanabad-Bhojpur belt of central Bihar, the Naxalite movement led to a fight for better wages, often culminating in horrific caste massacres by the private landlord armies.

The CPI(ML) and the Maoists are now extending their area of influence to north Bihar.Says former Bihar dgp, D.P. Ojha: "The Naxalites fight for the poorest of the poor. Laloo lets them fight the wage battle. He speaks against feudal forces but does not tackle the problem head on." All the landlords complain about the Naxalites. Says Shahi: "In the daytime, they are the CPI(ML) who negotiate for better wages. At night, they don uniforms and become Maoists who shoot at us."

Laloo Yadav is the lesser enemy who is criticised for the "criminalisation". True, it is Yadav gangs and Muslim extortionists who terrorise Champaran. But many of them were the lathaith (musclemen) of the landlords who have now branched off on their own in 'egalitarian' Bihar. It is the democratisation of muscle that has led to the rampaging crime figures in West Champaran.

Besides, as Parmar says, in West Champaran there are an average of 200 kidnappings every year. But the landlords, guarded by their musclemen, appear to enjoy a certain immunity. "In the three years that I was there, not a single landlord was kidnapped," says Parmar. What's perhaps even more revealing is that no mainstream political party ever came with a complaint about violation of the land ceiling or bonded labour laws.

In this rural chaos, the poor prey on the poor, some leave, some stay to toil for a few grains of rice. An old woman eats only boiled rice every day. She last tasted dal on the day of the chhat puja. Vegetables are a luxury. She and her descendants, malnourished, bend every day on the zamindar's fields. This is land which should have been hers if the law had any effect on the ground. Meanwhile, the rich travel down a bumpy road to make another court appearance.

The only idealism left in Champaran is inscribed on Ashoka's lonely pillar by an abandoned field in Lauriya village. It is written in a script no one can read.

My father spent two years in the CBI theater, never having a good word for the area, grinding poverty and terrible mistreatment of the lower classes was all he remembers.

A week in Bombay was enough to make me agree with him.

If they have the secrets of the universe, they sure are not sharing them with their countrymen.

no , actually Bihar is one of Indians larger states , sits astride the old Grand Trunk Road and the Ganges runs through it. Bihar is the location of many sites of great historical importance. Yet Bihar is also a region where the deep caste
divisions still are rife and where all kinds of banditry and
every brand of Communism also flourishes. Also due in part to some of the deep class divisions pointed out in the article.
It is a fertile place , although prone to devastating flooding which sets progress back years every time they happen.
It's a state of palatial estates and mud huts, again , just like this article points out. It also does not help matters that the chief mafioso of Bihar , Laloo Prasad Yadava , basically runs the show there. He is so powerful with all his little hit squads that even the national government does little to take him on.
Add to that ; Bihar has become a major conduit point for all the arms flow to the Mao boys in Nepal , and now apparently they are even stirring up trouble in the border villages.
Talk about the Bear using it's own nest...
May Bihar one day attain to some of it's former glory.`

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