Super-sensitive, not to bitter root Votebabu goes in, others secede BISWANATH ROY AND SUJAN DUTTA IN BOROGORA

Super-sensitive, not to bitter root  Votebabu goes in, others secede

BISWANATH ROY AND SUJAN DUTTA IN BOROGORA http://www.telegraphindia.com/1110509/jsp/frontpage/story_13958275.jsp

TRAGEDY OF A HUNGRY HAMLET IN BENGAL: WHAT GOVERNMENTS SEE... ...AND REFUSE TO SEE Gethi is such an inedible beetroot for most of us that it must be boiled overnight and dried thrice before the bitterness can be cut. Even after that, the faces of children pucker as soon as they put it in the mouth. A gethi looks like a misshapen potato with dark brown hairy strands that must be plucked clean. The Pahariyas of Borogora village in the lap of the Bagmundi jungles in Purulia's Ayodhya Hills survive on the gethi. India and Bengal have seceded from Borogora. You have read of it before, in these pages of The Telegraph. But that was almost three elections ago. The gethi is still eaten and the faces still contort and most of the Pahariyas still do not know who Jyoti Basu was or who Mamata Banerjee is. Only one person said he had "heard" of the Trinamul Congress leader. Borogora is a village in Jungle Mahal with two election booths 3km uphill that are categorised "super-sensitive". Polling will be held on Tuesday during the last phase of the Bengal elections. Motor vehicles can reach the last point on the road to Borogora from Purulia town in an hour. After that it is a 2km walk downhill and uphill, past the only source of water — a seasonal rivulet — for the men, women, children, goats and sheep of the village to wash, cook and clean in. Diarrhoea is rampant. Elections have come to Borogora again with the promise that the villagers will get about Rs 20 each from the Forward Bloc, which hopes to win the Bagmundi seat in which the village falls. It will take Borogora's voters a full day to exercise their franchise. The money that has been promised will barely be enough for a bottle (of liquor) and there will be none left to buy rice. On a hot afternoon in Borogora, three days before the May 10 poll, most of its adults surround us. The last time a bhadralok had visited, it was a block development officer about two months ago. The elders are eager to give their names because they want to be entitled to any dole that could be coming: Netai and Ratan and Lakhiram Pahariya, Ghasini and Thakurmoni Pahariya, Adhar Pahariya and Chandana Pahariya. Netai and Thakurmoni look like they are the eldest. It is pointless asking them their age. They are all illiterate. They are all skin and bones. But they have all voted in the past. In the past two years, they have got job cards — under the National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme — that they hand to a leader who comes by occasionally. The "leader" goes to Ayodhya and collects the money. The people of Borogora do not have cycles and are mostly too frail and too tired to walk up and down 8km. In any case, they do not know the formalities of getting money from the post office. It is also two years since the ojha — the witch doctor — has died. "He was good at ridding us of ghosts but not good at medicating us," says Netai and the others guffaw. The Pahariyas of Borogora make brooms and ropes out of the babui grass. They catch rabbits and, if lucky, peacocks. They have been promised blankets and clothes. "The votebabus (the term is not used sarcastically) come here and go away." Borogora cannot be described as an inaccessible village. The Urma railway station is just about 14km from here; the primary health centre about 18km. Too far for the villagers but within easy reach of administrations that claim to run such faraway countries like Bengal and India. A police officer, Soumyajit Basu, and a geography teacher, Partho Biswas, were suspected to have been kidnapped from Borogora village on October 22, 2010. Their bodies were found at the village of Chhatrajera near Borogora about three weeks later. The police alleged it was the work of Maoists. Three months ago, the police came to the village. Adhar says one of the policemen dug a rifle into his backside and another held a pistol to his chest. They were asking after Maobadis. "We have seen them this way and that," he points to the surrounding hills. "But they have nothing to do with us." Even the Maoists appear to have seceded from Borogora. How she was M-powered Mamata Banerjee at a rally in Hooghly's Pandua, where the minority community accounts for 32 per cent of the population, on April 30. Picture by Ashok Mazumder A dull summer day in June 2006. Just three weeks ago, Mamata Banerjee's party was routed in the Assembly elections. The Trinamul Congress chief has a Delhi flight to catch in the evening but has rushed to Mahajati Sadan to attend a convention for minorities. She is late; the meeting has already begun. Yet, the moment she rises to speak the dullness passes, her first few lines having a dramatic effect on the packed house. "Trinamul is no longer with the NDA," Mamata announces. The almost wholly Muslim audience bursts into thunderous applause. She continues: "The CPM is ruling Bengal because you have blessed it with your hands. Take your hands away and it will be out of power.'' Mamata was speaking out of political compulsion that day, having realised how her BJP ties were costing her in Muslim votes. She had just witnessed Trinamul's worst electoral show, with its tally halved from the 60 seats it had won in 2001 as a Congress ally. Five years on, Mamata is close to her dream of forming a government in Bengal. Vast sections of Muslims now support her, having turned their backs on the Left. The 2009 Lok Sabha results provide a clear picture: the Left trailed in 97 of the 125 Assembly segments with sizeable minority votes. In 2006, the Left had won 102 of these same 125 seats. Many in the CPM admit Trinamul's rapid advance in the past one year in districts with large Muslim populations: North and South Dinajpur and Malda in north Bengal, and Murshidabad, Nadia, North and South 24 Parganas and Hooghly in the south. "It's true that our party's position is not good in some parts of south Bengal, particularly the Muslim belts of Hooghly, Nadia and Howrah," housing minister and star CPM campaigner Gautam Deb said. "A lot depends on the two 24-Parganas. The party that does well in these two districts is likely to form the government." A worried CPM has tried its best over the past six months to court Muslims by announcing a job quota and welfare programmes. But a party leader admitted that this time, the minority vote was expected to favour the CPM only in Burdwan, Birbhum and the Arambagh sub-division of Hooghly. The turnaround "In Bengal, Muslims were by and large CPM backers. But when Singur erupted in September 2006, poor Muslim families realised that the Left was out to grab their landholdings that were not only a property but a source of livelihood for them,'' Trinamul MP and Union minister Sultan Ahmed said. "Then came Nandigram. It confirmed the minorities' fears that the CPM wouldn't let them live in peace. Mamata's prolonged agitation to save the land of poor Muslim farmers showed them that it was she and not the CPM who would look after their interests. The minorities began drifting away from the Left." The Rajinder Sachar committee report added to the trend by detailing Muslims' poor socio-economic condition and educational status in Bengal. It virtually damned the state government, showing it had done little for minority uplift. CPM central committee leader Hannan Mollah acknowledged the damage done by the Sachar report. "Land was a sensitive issue. The Trinamul chief exploited it by creating panic among the minorities that they would lose their property. They were misled. But the Sachar report dealt a body blow to us. A big section among Muslims began thinking the CPM hadn't looked after the community," Mollah said. To Mamata, the report gave new ammunition and a fresh chance to eat into the Left's Muslim support. She buttressed her efforts with some public posturing. A dupatta wrapped around her head, she offered namaz on the Singur dharna platform. She reminded the minorities that she had sent late Trinamul MP Ajit Panja to fight in court so that the azaan could continue to be played over loudspeakers. Trinamul leaders criss-crossed the state telling Muslims how, even when she was in the NDA, Mamata had tried to resist the enactment of the anti-terror law Pota, which she saw as anti-Muslim. As for Mamata, wherever she went in Bengal, she spoke of Ram and Rahim, Ishwar and Allah, in the same breath. Success followed in the 2008 panchayat polls, 2009 Lok Sabha elections and last year's civic polls. After taking over as railway minister, Mamata introduced trains in areas with concentrated Muslim populations, introduced recruitment tests in Urdu, and announced that a station would be named after the last Mughal emperor, Bahadur Shah Zafar. Bengal's Muslims, of course, are not a monolithic group. The state's Urdu-speaking Muslims have largely voted for the Congress except for a few elections immediately after the Babri Masjid demolition when, out of a sense of insecurity, they leant towards the CPM. It was the Bengali-speaking rural Muslims who had traditionally backed the Left. That changed before the 2008 panchayat polls. It is these Muslims and their land acquisition fears that are worrying the CPM now. Although Mamata shed her BJP links only after the 2006 rout, she had already got the message two years earlier. In the 2004 parliamentary polls, she had been the only Trinamul candidate to win while partner BJP scored a duck. The Muslim vote had gone heavily against the alliance in the aftermath of the Gujarat pogrom. So, before the 2009 parliamentary elections, Mamata realised she had no choice but to strike a deal with the Congress. It paid off. Some in the Congress think that rather than winning over the Muslims herself, Mamata has gained from her tie-up with the Congress. "The spectre of the BJP retaining power had prompted the Muslims to vote for the Congress in 2009. Trinamul reaped the rewards of its alliance with us," a state Congress leader said. "Trinamul will similarly benefit in this election as the Muslims are strongly with the Congress now. We have a steady 13 to 15 per cent vote share and much of it comes from our minority support." Yet it's impossible to gloss over one fact. Trinamul bagged 50 of the 81 civic bodies in last year's municipal polls, many of them in areas with high minority concentration, without an alliance with the Congress. So if the "M" factor is a Congress strength, it may be a strength for another "M" too. ANINDYA SENGUPTA IN CALCUTTA