All talk, no action
Speaking generally
By Chanchal Sarkar

MAYBE the saddest thing about India is that there is so much talk and so little action. The very best example is the position of women. Dr Radhakrishnan once wrote that in the art of suffering we men are mere amateurs it is the women who are the professionals. Just take a look at the system in society. In a poor country the only visible asset of a family is land. And in land, the women get nothing. They do not get individual ownership and have no claim to the homestead. Even in those very few states which have given ownership to women and have brought in what are called joint pattas even there the document often has only the signature of the husband. Else wife knows nothing of joint pattas and even if, in the case of divorce or separation, the wife is told to move out of the family home she does not know that she has a right to part of the land.

This is only the beginning. There are multiple marriages, divorces, violence, dowry, custody of children. In all of these the women are the main sufferers. There is, now, a large and growing number of laws governing things like dowry but very few women can afford to go to court. They are expensive, long drawn out, full of complex procedure, and fees claimed by rapacious lawyers. The whole system is compounded by failure. Failure of the women’s organisations, failure of the bureaucrats and politicians even of the Left. West Bengal has done something remarkable in distributing land to the sharecroppers and also in giving women rights in land. But in actual implementation there are a good many glitches. The officials are quite willing to let things go on as they were and give ownership only to men and keep quiet about the women. The law says that joint pattas will be valid only from 1992 and that land already distributed will remain as they are. Most of the land has been distributed between the seventies and 1992 to men alone so there won’t be much left to go to the women.

The women’s movement has quite a long history in Bengal, West and East, and there was the famous Tebhaga Movement of the 40s where the sharecroppers fought for one-third share of the land they cultivated for the landowner. Some of the women leaders of the Tebhaga Movement are alive in the villages of Midnapur and the 24 Parganas and are still active in the fight for women’s rights.

I recently saw a very interesting slides-cum-lecture about the women from those two West Bengal districts and it made one’s heart heave in sorrow to see the conditions in those villages while there is so much consumerism and hunger for the good things of life. But my conclusion was very pessimistic — we will go on talking and framing laws while conditions will remain as they are.

Remembering Sanjay

Sanjay Ghose was abducted by theULFA from Majuli in Assam on July 4, 1997 and has not been heard of since. This is a major tragedy of our time because Sanjay could be said to have the values which the Indian young have almost totally lost. After studying in Cambridge Sanjay did none of the things which one expects children of the Indian elite to do. He did not join the governing services after sitting an examination, he did not slide into an executive position in a mercantile firm, nor did he join a multinational and go in for postings round the world.

Instead he took off for a backward part of Rajasthan, Bikaner, and set to work among the people next to a canal scheme. He turned himself into a complete Rajasthani with turban on the head and ring in the ear and spoke perfect Rajasthani. He was without any ‘side’ and was good leader of a team simply because he led from the front.

The Bikaner project at Lunkarnsar was very successful, but after a few years Sanjay was ready to move on to an even more backward area in Assam. Majuli, where he went, not very far from Jorhat, is the world’s biggest river island, very unstable, constantly under threat from the Brahmaputra. Starting by knowing nothing of the language and culture of the place, Sanjay and his team gathered knowledge by living with the people and by picking on the key factors in their life.

After initial problems he and the team settled down well but their very success attracted the ire of ULFA which sent them several warnings. One day he was invited for a discussion and has not been heard of since. His family firmly believe that he is somewhere around and will surface one day.

One reads of the work of other NGOs but Sanjay, I think, had the right feel and touch and knew exactly how to draw village people into the task of helping themselves. In his quiet and unobtrusive way Sanjay had a lot of courage and could not be moved by threats or warnings. One of the conditions negotiated for the team to retreat from Majuli was that they should not work there even if the people wanted them to. That is a very great pity because Sanjay’s wife, Sumita, and other workers could have worked according to Sanjay’s strategy of action.

Recently in Bihar in its backward areas like Palamau and Lohardagga, I tried to get some information about the Naxalite groups, several of them, which worked there in the far western hills. I found it very difficult because no one seemed to know much and what they talked about was always hearsay. Some spoke in praise of the young men others some called them dacoits and extortionists. Only a face-to-face evaluation could have brought light, but that was not to be.

After returning I have tried to learn more about leaders like Vinod Mishra the leader of the CPI(ML) who died a few months ago and about others like Subrata Dutt ‘Jauhar’ (killed in police action). It is difficult to get a clear picture of their political ‘thesis’ and to understand how much they are indebted to Latin, Lin Piao or Charu Mazumdar. Some of the formations have deserted their underground habitat and chosen to work overground, their names are many: PWG — PU, MCC, Liberation, Janshakti, New Democracy, Red Flag etc. etc.