browsing the cowbelt

when the river weeps

2011-07-31T04:48:00.000-07:00

This Chapter is under production for the last one year...writers block ;)

Shubha appeared in my dreams , always. Life defined by a missed occasion is a chronic pain, an incomplete story.Pain and agony is personal to every man. So is fear. No matter what you do time only can assuage it. It was the urgent need to kill time so that i can live that i accepted to join Dharbhanga as a District Collector. Dharbhanga in the mid 1980s was known for its severe floods. I expected river Kosi to drown my sorrows.

Dharbhanga shared a 120 km long common border with Nepal on its north. It has four Tehsils and fourteen development blocks. The district had an overall literacy rate of 35 % and a female literacy rate of mere 23%. The reason was not difficult to fathom. Annual floods affected 7 of the 14 development blocks, bringing a complete halt to normal life and livelihood. 1400 of the 3400 Primary and Secondary schools would submerge under water for 3 months a year. The scale was to be seen to be believed. Over night barren sandy river beds would transform into surreal oceans. Roads and common mile stones would disappear to display a canvass so wide that human eyes would fail to capture in a single glance.The floods in Dharbhanga had no direct correlation with the average rainfall in the district. The river Kosi sourced its water from the rain fall at the foothills of the Himalayas in Nepal bordering China.

Two rivers Gaudia and Kauldi enter India from Nepal at Neemaganj Tehsil of Dharbhanga. They meet at a point called the Chaudhry Suran Singh Barrage. The river from there on is known as the Kosi. I had problem remembering the names of the two Nepalese rivers. Every time I wanted to take the names I would think of Sardari Singh Gauda, the Excise minister who got be shunted out of Bikaner and Sarabjeet Singh Kaul my boss who would suck up to Gauda day in and day out. Every year floods affected 215 of the 1568 Revenue Villages. The only disaster I was familiar with till then was the droughts in Budelkhand. Floods was an altogether new concept to me, requiring more immediate and large scale treatment , a fact I didn’t had much time to learn. I was posted at Dharbhanga in February and post June floods would strike the district any day. Kosi they told me first "Sweats”, then "Seeps" then "Pipes" and finally "Boils". Terms the meaning of which I was to learn later on.

To understand floods, one needs to understand a river and the scale of water it carries in its belly. River Kosi covers a distance of 130 km north to south of the district forming its western boundary separating district Sultanpur from Dharbhanga. During normal days the daily discharge of water in Kosi is about 40,000 cu-secs. A cu-sec is equal to a water cube of 1 cubic feet passing a point in 1 second. During floods the discharge would go as high as 600,000 cu-secs. This meant 600,000 cubes of water of the size of 1cubic feet each, passing a point in a second. At Chaudhry Suran Singh Barrage there are 39 gates. The Junior Engineer there opens the gates as per the flow of water. Unlike a Dam, a Barrage is not meant to store water. Its only use is to give some volume and new direction to the natural flow of water. From the head the Rapti flows at a rate of 3 meters per second i.e. 30 meters in 10 seconds or 1200 meters ie 1.2 km in one hour. The floodwater takes almost 10 hours to cover the 120 km distance to reach the southernmost tip of the district.

The first person to brief me about floods was Virendra Goswami, District Coordinator , Disaster Management, United Nations Development Programme ( UNDP ). The UNDP had been assisting the state government in relief operations by providing the services of certain Individuals with rich experience in social work and disaster management. A young man of 26, Goswami had witnessed the two previous floods in Dharbhanga. A MSW graduate from Delhi School of Social Sciences, this he told me was his fifth job. Prior to this he had been working for various NGOs specializing in areas as wide as Rural Livelihood , Organic Agriculture to Domestic violence. Though on the UNDPs payroll, he was reporting to the District Magistrate for day to day functioning. It took me a week to meet all the district officers and the politicians. By the third week i started devoting more time to understand what happens in the name of flood relief.

I started my understanding of floods by visiting the affected villages near Kosi. From Chaudry Charan Singh Barrage in the north to Jaitwan Thana in the south the Kosi formed the 125 Km long western border of the district.The local Thanedar Sharbat Khan, a pot belied Muslim old man had been incharge of the Jaitwan Thana for the last 5 years. He was the only Muslim thanedar in the distrcit. The area, with a majority muslim population, no SP wanted to take any chances by being labelled as a " communal". They posted the "most secural" Thanedar of the distrcit at Jaitwan. As for Sharbat Khan, he spent his time either saving the drunk local fishermen of the area from drowning or disposing off the un-identified bodies that the river would often bring to his jurisdiction during floods. The walls of his thana were full of pictures of un- identified dead bodies. All these years the Hindus and the Muslims were too busy making sense of their flood affected livelihoods that they forgot to fight, denying Sharbat Khan the much desired opportunity to display his secular credentials.

Besides his stability of tenure, Sharbat Khan was known for his surreptitious visits to Magla Gaon. Mangla gaon, the village of Bards who once sang and danced for the Nawabs of the Jaitwan Riyasat had now been reduced to a known village of whores. Every officer, or say every department in the district had a dedicated whore in its name. The perks and loyalty were traditionally maintained. The erstwhile Nawabs had been replaced by government and contractor sahibs. As for the original patrons, their riyasat lied buried, somewhere deep in side the mighty Kosi. Most of summer one could often get a glimpse of a thin mettle rod tipping out from within the dry Kosi sands near Magla. Some claim it to be the tip of the dome of the Jaitwan Haveli. The Junior Engineer Floods division, Arvind Dubey, would use the Haveli rod as a flood measuring gadget. He had kept his local whore, 18 year old Phulki Devi on a tip to tip basis. Poor Phulki was meticulous in her daily readings and reporting. Arvind Dubey had bought her a cell phone only for this task.Every time the rod disappeared the JE would declare floods. This news would then be flashed to the office of the disaster cell at Bhopal , from where the message reaches the Chief Secretays office and then to New Delhi. All this while Phulki Devi was oblivious of her immense contribution in building up an authentic National Disaster Information System, introduced a few years back as a path breaking innovation in National Disaster Management. This had been the case for the last 8 years. Every year the rod would be at its full length in March, 1/2 in August , which according to Arvind Dubey would mean 80,000 cusec of water in the river. At 3/4 visibility of the Nawabi rod it was time to collect sand bags and order boulders from Mirzapur mines. It was when the visibility turned almost 1/10 that the senior officers would start touring the area.

It was the month of September that the flood like situation started developing, learning from the past administrative tradition it meant few things

1. A flood meeting of all the departments with their "action plans" , which was nothing but a copy of the last years "action plan" with only change being the date and the name of the officer. These would be then compiled together to form the district flood plan. A copy of the district flood plan would then be sent to all the senior officers including the Relief commissioner at Bhopal. I got my copy in time.

2.The revenue department plays the most important part in the entire flood relief operations. The Distrcit had five Tehsils under respective Sub Divisional Magistrates.Floods affected only four of the Tehsils. Of Sadar Tehsil , Samatpur, Tejapur and Gardhi , Smamatpur was the most flod affected Tehsil of the district .

Chapter 12 :Love & Di- Ammonia Phosphate

2009-11-14T20:26:00.000-08:00

Anandita Sen the young TV journalist from New Delhi had called me a few days back asking if there were any cases of farmer suicides in Hoshangabad, Bundelkhand. A fresh graduate from the prestigious Institute of Mass Communication, New Delhi, she didn't seem to believe my telephonic denial. This she proved by appearing at my office one fine morning late in December.

It was a normal winter morning. My white Ambassador swayed into the Hoshangabad Collectorate. In spite of the severe cold there was a queue of visitors waiting to get their complaints lodged. It is not often that a young, English speaking, jeans clad girl comes visiting you in this remote rural district. Anandita Sen was a quintessential college girl. With her looks she could easily disguise her-self as a fashion model. Her black bag I guessed was a genuine Louis Vuitton, filled with sun cream, mascara and probably a bottle of Evian water too. Her looks told me so. She smelled good, a Davidoff. There are moments in life when time freezes, you see but you don’t hear , you forget the pending files, project deadlines, visiting VIPs and the barrage of people waiting to meet you outside the office. All that your mind captures is aesthetics, beauty, and a pleasant feeling, for perhaps no apparent reason. Anandita Sens beauty had this effect on me.

For the first one hour the young bimbette fed me with data on poverty and deprivation in Hoshangabad .With a bar diagram she showed me that in the last ten years the annual rainfall had dropped from 1089 mm to 360 mm. My lonesome, rural, evil mind was however more interested to know if she was dating someone.

For the next one hour I went into a state of “cognitive dissonance”. A term I first read in a book on Marketing. It is used to describe the state where what you experience goes against your hard held beliefs and prejudices. Say, what happens when you see a donkey fly? I believed that Anandita Sen was a bimbette who would know nothing about rural life and its complex issues. Time was to prove me wrong. Anandita Sen told me that she had been visiting all districts of Bundelkhand for the last three years. During this period Hoshangabad had seen 5 DMs change hands. She had interviewed 345 farmers of which 85 % were small and marginal farmers. By the time I recovered from my dazed escapade of her urban beauty she had finished her presentation. I picked up from where I had left listening. I nodded that the 70% drop in rainfall in one decade meant a change in the fortune of the districts farmers. A fact I never bothered to check, an analysis my crisis ridden, fire fighting oriented work culture had no time for. Next she opened her Louis Vuitton. Out came, neither any Mascara, nor any bottle of Evian water. Anandita Sen pulled out a bunch of questionnaires prepared for me and the District Agriculture Officer. The Louis Vuitton I was certain had many more surprises in store .The Ex-Bimbette wanted my opinion on.

 Why was the soil in the district changing from normal to alkaline over the last 6-7 years, was it due to the excessive use of chemicals?

 Why has the per hectare intake of Di -Ammonium Phosphate (DAP) in Hoshangabad doubled in the last three years?

 What was I planning to do to increase the seed replacement ratio (SPR) from the present miserable 7% to 45% to + 50%

 If I had any plans for revamping the Irrigation system in the district?

By the end of it I was certain that Ms. Anandita Sen was definitely not dating anyone. With the looks like hers, coupled with that penetrating intellect, no man worth his salt would dare approach her. As for me, there were two main reasons for my anxiety . First the answers to the questionnaire that I was suppose to know. Second Anandita Sen who I wanted to know.

Browsing the cowbelt

Love and Di-Ammonia Phosphate

The questionnaire required me to give a brief about Agriculture in Hoshangabad, trends, problems and proposed solutions. How is a man supposed to answer on issues of which he knows very little about? I was reminded of Mr. Monga s ( my Foundation days Course Co ordinator during the 1980s) opinion about civil servants. "In their cocooned sub conscience they suffer from a suppressed inferiority complex. They hide it in arrogance and inaccessibility ". Till now the strategy had worked for me. I would delegate all that I didn’t understand to the con-cerned departments. To the rest I would be inaccessible.

For the next two weeks I had daily sessions with Mr. Tibatia the District Agriculture Officer. For the next one week and many more weeks to follow, Anandita Sen never left my mind. A Jat from Muzaffarnagar Uttar Pradesh, agriculture for Tibatia was not just a profession but a fam-ily tradition too. According to Tibatia it was an honour for him to teach Agriculture to the District Collector. Having served in the Agriculture department for almost 27 years Tibatia had some bitter remarks about the urban dwellers of our country. "Sir, it is the biggest un-acknowledged tragedy of our country that the so called intellectuals and poverty experts dwelling in our cities are criminally ignorant about how much hard work our farmers put in to supply the bread on their breakfast table". To the world around him Tibatia was a 6 feet specta-cled nutty scientist experimenting with cocktails of seeds, manures, fertilizers and insecticides. To me he was a captivating coach of Agricul-ture, a topic so boring, yet so critical to understand poverty and other development issues of our country.

Tibatia went on to criticize the arm chair philosophy of the higher officials at the agriculture department at Bhopal. Like a trained rural development expert he started throwing in terms such as Participatory Rural Appraisal (PRA), and Rapid Rural Appraisal (RRA), tools of research first adopted by practitioners’ of rural development such as Paulo Freire in Brazil, and Robert Chambers in the USA. The basic philosophy being : the local wisdom of the natives of a village/ town should be considered while formulating development programmes for the place. Decisions need not be “Tuglaki “in nature. He believed that the local farmer who is otherwise considered " un -educated " and " ill- informed " is a store house of information pertaining to good agricultural practices. Troubled by presumption of "ignorance of local farmers" as well as lack of time and patience displayed by the researchers on agriculture, Tibatia opposed the Questionnaire approach of Anandita Sen s research. At last I had an accomplice.

A week later Anandita Sen visited me at my office. She was wearing a light blue Kameez and a white Salwar with a white netted Dhupatta around her neck. Yesterday’s ramp model had transformed into a potential bahu of Shaas Bahu soap. She looked graceful and had a smile on her face. I was not sure if the smile was her general happiness towards life or she had developed a crush on the Hoshan-gabad District Collector. Yesterdays questionnaires were not discussed. There was a long conversation on her experience at IIMC, her dream of becoming a successful Rural Journalist, how she felt foreign seed companies like Monsanto exploited the third world farmers and her plans to publish a paper on her Bundelkhand experiences. At last I was seeing some future for both of us. Suddenly her mood transformed. I have seen such mood swings in almost every women that I have known in my life. Anandita Sen was no exception to this universal truth of a woman’s mind. In her new manifestation she expressed her interest in the functioning of the District Cooperative bank, Crop insurance and success rate of various agricultural credit schemes. While I was still getting my self ready to adapt to her sudden hormonal transformation as well as on some way to avoid her piercing queries of which I had no answers, Tibatia who had walked in at almost the same time as Anan-dita Sen suggested a joint field survey to get a firsthand experience of a farmers life. Anandita Sen agreed. To me it was a god sent opportu-nity to know more about her life than that of the wretched farmers.

Deena Nath Shrivastav of Village Dhumri owns 1 hectare of land. This brings him under the category of marginal farmers. Farmers with land holdings between1 to 2 hectares are further categorized as Small Farmers; the ones holding more than 2 hectares are categorized as Big Farmers. My own observations in the field have been that it is the Large farmers who land up grabbing most of the government schemes. There is a Land Ceiling Act in place and therefore a farmer cannot hold more than a specific area of land in his name. I have heard cases where the big land lords had got their excess land registered in the name of their dogs, cats and other pets! In Hoshangabad as well as the

rest of MP the ceiling limit is 8 hectares of irrigated land and 12 hectares of un-irrigated land. An old man of 53, Deena Nath Shrivastav was 5 '3" and had kept a crowbar mustache. He always carried a long “Laathi” in his hand and a "Gamcha” on his right shoulder. On his head would be a parrot green Nehru cap symbolizing his membership of the Bhartiya Kissan Party. He wore a neat white Dhoti with a starched Kurta on top. Over all he reminded me of Chacha Chaudry from my child hood days.

It was early in the morning. Anandita Sen was already at the site at Dhumri waiting for us with few workers from a local NGO "Sangarsh ". Jayashankar the secretary of "Sangarsh” had been assisting Anandita in her field visits. A lanky character in his late 20s he had met me earlier at my office. It not often that one comes across a NGO wala who appears to speak as well as act for the common public cause. Jayashankar was one such exception. One would develop an instant liking for him the moment you meet him. Muthir Prasad a Landless farmer who was Dheena Naths neighbor too joined the gang. I had en-sured that all heads of the Departments of both Agriculture and the Line departments be present at the spot. There was the District Agriculture Officer Yogesh Tibatia, The District Horticulture Officer, Janardhan Yadav, District Fisheries Officer, Omkar Shrivastav, and District Sericulture Officer, Sukdev Sigh. Anandita Sen was the first one to speak. Youth and patience hardly go together. My biased mind started looking for traces of the bimbette that had disappeared a few days ago. Maa Sen started reading a report based on a questionnaire she had subjected Deena Nath to. Tibatia inter-vened. "Madam, why don’t we let the poor man speak for himself, whatever he wants to speak rather than what we want to hear". Suddenly there was complete silence on the poor farmer’s field. It was as if in place of Tibatia it was the ghost of Robert Chambers summarizing P.R.A., his life’s learning in one sentence. What followed was Biblical in the history of Agriculture Education for a layman like me and Anan-dita Sen. Thus spoke the Indian Farmer. Choosing Dheena Nath Shrivastav as his mouthpiece.

Dheena Nath Shrivastav pulled out a piece of paper from the small knot at the end of his "Gamcha". The paper to me has been the best note that I could have read on the economics of Indian Agriculture. In that note were listed in Hindi some bold topics below which were scribbled some calculations pertaining to individual topics. He placed that paper closer to his old week eyes. He read. He elaborated.

1: Mitti : Soil Work (Harrow, Patta and Cultivator) 2 Hrs @ Rs 300 = Rs 600

Soil, Tibatia had taught me is the first 15 cm of matter on the earth’s surface. It comprises of about 16 Elements divided into Major and Mi-nor Elements. All these 16 elements are also present in the grain we eat. Further all 16 elements are present in our body too. Carbon Diox-ide, Hydrogen, Nitrogen, Phosphorus, and Potassium being the Major Elements, the last three together are known as NPK. Magnesium, Sul-phur, Iron, Calcium etc being the Minor Elements. "Sir every year three to four scientists from the District Soil Testing Laboratory come and collect soil samples from our fields ".”Every year they leave behind five to six conical ditches of 1 foot by 1 foot in my field”.”Sir I nor any farmer in Dhumri has ever received any report about our soil, neither this year nor any year before that". “How would I know what my soil lacks if I don’t get the report? “ At the time of joining Hoshagabad, the Scientist at the District Soil Testing Laboratory had come to greet me. He I remember had claimed to have collected 25,000 soil samples all across Hoshangabad. All I could now see were 25,000 angry, disillu-sioned farmers multiplied by average of five ditches of 1 foot by 1 foot on every field .That about 125,000 ditches for collecting soil samples

all across Hoshangabad." Sahib, do you know a gram of soil contains about 100, 00,000 bacteria in it?” His questions by now had left me foxed and guilty. From the corner of my eyes I saw Anandita Sen measure the depth of one such ditch. The Measuring Scale had appeared out of her Louis Vuitton. My doubts about the black bag had been right. Without waiting for my answer Dheena Nath Shrivastav went on in a nonchalant manner. “Sahib, do you know 1 hectare of land with six inches of soil weighs about 20, 00,000 kg!". “Sahib, do you know that it takes 2000 years to form 1 inch of soil? He looked at me. I looked at Tibatia. He looked impressed, with the farmer’s wisdom and our igno-rance.

Dheenanath now started talking about the chemical composition of the soil in his field. "Sahib, look at this". Dheena Nath Shrivastava

picked up a handful of soil in his hand and showed it to me. Like a trained chemist he added. ”Sahib, this very soil bred fortune for me and

my family since my childhood but for the last three years it has been gulping Gypsum like anything". "If not for the 90 % government sub-sidy on Gypsum I would be a beggar “.”Not that I am any better ". Tibatia had taught me that pH is the measure of how acid or basic (alkaline) a liquid is. Different crops have different pH requirements. Soil with pH value more than 7 is defined as Basic. A land with pH value less than 7 is called Acidic. A pH value of 7 therefore represents a normal neutral soil. Anandita Sen looked on. The heat and dust of Dhumri had turned her beautiful face red. Yet to me she continued glowing as ever. Heart finds love and attraction at the strangest of places. I was wondering how my mom would react to the idea of having a Bengali bahu at home. Anandita Sen broke my spell with her by now predictable hormonal bout. “One of the main causes of land turning Basic with high pH value is water logging". "So we add Gypsum Ca SO4 .2H2O which reacts with water to form Sulphuric Acid, H2SO4 .The acid produced neutralizes the soil and reduces the pH". "It’s like gulping a glass of milk when you have acidity in your stomach. Milk has a pH value of about 10. When it reacts with the stomach acid with pH value of about 1 it neutralizes the pain". All my exposed ignorance plus the information overload had left me gasping. My stomach felt strange. A glass of milk at that moment would have certainly helped.

It was Jayashankars turn. He wanted to speak on the importance of humus in soil. “Sir you can identify a good soil by just looking and feeling it”.”The soil in this area lacks humus”. “Years of excessive use of fertilizers and low supplement of organic material have destroyed the hu-mus in the local soil." ” Ideally a good soil should be black or brown in color and should absorb water after few minutes’.”On touch it should be cold, soft, airy and granular". Anandita Sen further added." I have always told the local farmers not to burn their fields after harvest”. "Humus is as important for the soil as blood is for our body". What Anandita said was right. I had seen miles of fields on fire right after the harvest in Hoshangabad. All this happens because our farmers believe that the carbon produced from fire would be good for their plants growth. "What they don’t realize is that in the process they kill billions of bacteria and fungus which is important for the development of our soil ". It is then that the farmer becomes dependent on modern day fertilizers, using it more than it is required.

2: Seeds:Seed 10 kg @ Rs 12 /Kg = Rs 120

To understand seed as an agricultural input Tibatia taught me that one needs to understand the concept of Seed Replacement Ratio (SPR). SPR is the percentage of seeds out of the total seeds used by the farmer that he buys from the market. The rest of the supply he gets from his own field grown seeds. Seeds bought from the market are known as Certified Seeds. Certified Seeds are developed from Foundation Seeds, which are grown in controlled environment such as Government Agricultural Farms, Agricultural Universities. Foundation Seeds are devel-oped from Breeder Seeds. Breeder Seeds are the purest seeds available and are developed in Agricultural Laboratories under very high stan-dards. Higher the SPR better would be the yield. At Hoshangabad the SPR was a meager 7 %. That explained the low productivity of 28 quin-tal of wheat from one Hectare of land in Hoshangabad. There is an almost 50% subsidy on seeds sold from Government Societies as com-pared to the market price. Seed of PBW 343 which is the most popular breed of wheat in and around Hoshangabad is available for Rs 980 per quintal i.e. Rs 9.80 per Kg. For the poor Dheenanath this subsidized rate too was a fortune. Dheenanath now wanted to talk about seeds and how he has been running from pillar to post to get the free mini kits of seeds being distributed by the agriculture department . Every year the Agriculture Department distributes about 2000 packets of 1 Kg of seeds to small and marginal farmers for demonstration purpose.

3: Fertilizers

DAP 10 kg @ Rs 12 /Kg only once = Rs 120

Urea 10Kg @Rs6 /Kg Two times = Rs 120

Zinc 1Kg @ Rs 30 /Kg = Rs 30

Anandita Sen knew more than we associated her to. “Research has proved that over the last one decade the percentage of Sulphur in soil in our country has dropped to about 75 ppm from the mandatory 150 ppm". "Sulphur is now treated as a Major Element”. “So in place of NPK

we now have farmers talking about NPKS ". Tibatia had taught me a simple way of identifying mineral deficiency in plants. If the soil lacks Nitrogen the older leaves start turning yellow, if the soil is Sulphur deficient than it is the new leaves that start turning yellow.

My only real, and unsolicited experience with fertilizers till than had been with Di Ammonium Phosphate (DAP). DAP is used only once right before the sowing or along with the seeds. DAP perhaps would be the only fertilizer that every policemen in the country would be familiar with. The average requirement of DAP per hectare is about 150 kgs. In Hoshangabad in spite of poor rains we had 120,000 hectares of land to be cropped under rice. This would mean about 150, 00,000 kgs or 150000 Quintals or 15,000 Metric Tones of DAP. The annual supply of DAP allotted for Hoshangabad by The Registrar of Co-operatives at Bhopal was 10,000 MT. A shortfall for 5000 MT was bound to have conse-quences. It would mean long queues of agitated farmers, black-marketing by the various Private Vendors, law and order situations demanding short notice meetings headed by the Collector and attended by the SP, ADM, Additional SP, SDMs, DSPs, Tehsildars, SHOs of all Thana’s and people from the Revenue department, District Agricultural Officer, District Corporative Officer and Farmers representatives. All except the last three wondering what a DAP is. Dheenanath spent Rs 120 per Rabi season of 6 months on 10 Kg of DAP. Besides DAP there was Urea to be used at least twice in a season. At Rs 6 per Kg he would spend Rs 120 more for two spreads of 10 Kg of Urea on his one bhiga of land.

4: Credit

Rs 4,000 @ 4% per Year from Government PACs

Rs 15,000 @ 10% per Month from the local money lender???

Tibatia had organised "Packed Lunch" for all. Dheenanath had brought some cucum-ber for us from a neighbour's field. Anandita Sen who had met Dheenanath several times before seemed to be used to having lunch at odd hours and odd places like the poor farmers field. For me it was a novel experience .Our conversation continued after the Lunch. Anandita told me that like most farmers in India Dheenanath too was a member of the local Primary Agricultural Credit Society or PACs. His only local Institu-tional source of finance. For emergencies he relied on the prompt services of the local money lender Surmani Jain. At the PACS Dheenanath had to pay Rs 1 as membership fee. His credit worth was decided by two factors. The number of Shares of the PACS that he owned and the Scale of Finance (SOF) decided by the district administration. While the number of Shares owned decided the minimum limit of his credit the SOF decided the maxi-mum limit. As per the rule he was entitled to a credit of 20 times of his Shares value with the condition that it cannot cross the SOF value.

I knew that every year a committee under the chairmanship of the Collector decides on the SOF, which is the Average input cost per crop per hectare. That sets the maximum limit to which a PACS can loan a farmer. Various crops have dif-ferent Scale of Finance. In the case of Wheat it was Rs 10,000 per acre. A hectare has 2.5 acres. Anandita Sen did some quick calculations on her Blackberry 9700 which she had taken out of her Louis Vuitton. She explained how as per the Scale of Finance Dheenanath who owned 1 hectare of land could borrow a maximum of Rs 25,000. But to avail this amount he had to own shares worth 1/20th of 25,000 i.e. Rs 1250. That is at least 13 shares of Rs 100 each. At the local PACS Dheenanath had bought 2 shares of Rs 100 each. Dheenanath did not had the money to buy the remaining 11 shares .In this case his upper limit came down to 20 times of 200 that is Rs 4000 .The credit from the PACS however was not in form of cash but the subsidized seeds and fertilizers sold from the PACs. Dheenanath needed at Rs 15,000 more. For this he had resorted to borrowing Rs 10,000 from the local money lender Surmani Jain. Dheenanath had agreed to pay a monthly interest rate of 10%.

Irrigation: Tibatia had taught me that Irrigation water can be sourced from Canals from Dams, Pumping Plants lifting water from big rivers, Government Tube wells, Government Subsidy for Boring of Shallow ( 1m -30 m ) Private Tube wells, Medium ( 31 m - 60 m )Private Tube well and , Deep ( 61 to 100 m ) Private Tube well. I learned that the main Canal sup-plying water to the fields is called the “Branch. A Branch has “Distributaries (DYs)” branching out of it.

A DY has a capacity of about 30 Cumec catering to irrigation needs of about 1200 hectares of land. A DY further branches out into “Minors‟. A Minor has a capacity of about 2.5 Cumecs. The end of the Minor is called the Tail. The point where the Canal originates is called the Head.

Farmers in Hoshangabad like farmers in most part of our country were dependent on rain god for water, but that was a decade ago. The neighbouring district of Tikamghar happened to be the home district of the state irrigation minister. He got an Irrigation canal the “Brihad Sichayi Nahar” sanctioned for his district. The Canal passing through Hoshangabad had an extension in form of a “Minor” ending at Dhumri. Every March Dheenanath paid a fixed official sum of Rs 287 /hectare to the Amin from the Irrigation department. Few years back he had considered growing sug-arcane 9but had to abandon the plan when the Amin demanded the official rate of Rs 474 /hectare of sugarcane. Since then he had stuck to wheat in Rabi and Paddy in Khariff. Both had the same rate of Rs 287/Hectare of land irrigated.

After the field tour i got busy preparing for the Revenue Ministers visit to Hoshangabad. One evening a week later, the peon at the Camp Offcie brought a packet. It was from Anandita Sen. Inside was a thank you note and a book “One Straw Revolution” by Masanobu Fukuoka. Time however could not erase the emotions i underwent that day at Dhumri. All the calculations and learnings on Dheenaths field not only helped me understand the hardships a poor farmer faces but also the size of our rural economy and ever prevalent poverty there.

Area owned By Dheena Nath = 1 Bhiga (800 sqm)*4 = 10,000 sq m = 1 Hectare, Agricultural Input for 1 bhiga of land

1. Soil Work (Harrow, Patta and Cultivator) 2 Hrs @ Rs 300 = 600

2. Water 2 times for 1.5 Hours = Rs 270@ Rs 90 /Hr (Rs 10Boring + Rs 80 for Engine Rent) = 270

3. DAP 10 kg @ Rs 12 /Kg only once = 120

4. Urea 10Kg @ Rs6 /Kg Two times = 120

5. Zinc 1Kg @ Rs 30 /Kg = 30

6. Total Input Cost for 1 bhiga = 1140

7. Total Input Cost for 1 hectare ( 1 bhiga * 12.5 ) excluding interest = 14250

8. Interest on Private Loan for 5 Months = 7500

9. Total input cost for 1 hectare (12.5 Bhigas ) with interest =Rs 21,750

10. Total Wheat output from 1 Hectare = 2800 Kg

11. Market Price = @ Rs 9 /Kg

Market Price for 2800 Kg of Wheat = Rs 25,200

Profit Margin for 6 months of labor = Rs 3250

Anandita Sen "Imagine this is all Dheenanath earns from 5 months of labour “. During this time his wife and three young kids also work, almost as hard as him on the wheat crop. If Rs 3250 is the value addition by a family of five for five months their per month value addition is Rs 650. With some assumptions the annual net earnings of the family would be 650 *12 =Rs 7800. Hoshangabad has a population of 6 lakh families. If you consider Hoshangabad as a country with this logic the GDP of your country for a year would be 7800* 600,000 = Rs 468 crores. Hoshan-gabad has a population of 30 lakh people. With the same logic the per capita income addition for a day is Rs 4 !".

Its been more than a decade since I last stood at the poor farmers field. After all these years im sure nothing much would have changed at Dhumri. Dheenanath, if alive, would be still wishing it rains heavy this year. This way he would save Rs 287 of the Irrigation rent. As for Anandita, I met her a year back at an Agricultural meet in Delhi. She is married and is now working for the seed company Monsanto as a consultant.

( Disclaimer : This story is a complete work of fiction and is not a reflection on any person , place or institution

Chapter 10 : Lbsnaa ,Mussoorie and beyond.

2009-10-05T00:12:00.000-07:00

It was perhaps years of stress as a DM or just the chronic childhood desire in me to get away from work at the slightest of excuse that I decided to utilize the Secretariat posting to travel to the hills.

In my old trunk holding remains of my pre Tikamgarh years was an old issue of the 'Lonely Planet' that I had bought during my Hindu college days. Page after page on India, constant surfing of the travel portals plus the daily viewing of “100 Things to do before you die “ on '"Travel and Living "only added to my confusion. They all talked about India, its temples, snake charmers, crazy sadhus of Banaras, Pink city and the Taj Mahal. Page after page, words such as diverse, rich cultural, namastey and Incredible would hit you. At last I discarded the book and all other sources of travel information that I had and decided to travel to the place where it all started from. Mussoorie the queen of hills.

With a deep dense layer of fog covering the entire spread of the Himalyan Oaks , Pines and Deodars on the shiwaliks , waking up in Mussoorie is the best way a man can say good morning to life .Cold fresh air that one can feel to the depths of ones nostril are at times punctuated by a brief erratic drizzle. The shower could suddenly turn in to hailstorm in summers and to snow in winter’s .In the winter evenings the Mall would be full of tourist witnessing the rare 'winter line" eclipsing the entire Doon valley. Back in the morning, like ghosts, figures would appear and disappear into the dark fog on the busy Mall Road. The rickshaw pullers, the hunched Garhlwaldi milk men in all woollen traditional coats, topes, and skin tight trousers carrying milk cans on their backs ,young European men and women walking down from the Language school in Landour, Tibetan Lamas from the Happy Valley, honeymoon couples walking like Siamese twins indifferent of where they were going , and at last apple cheeked children going to school tugged in sweaters, caps and mufflers. In the pre independence days entry to The Mall was an exclusive right of the “whites” .A board stating “ Dogs and Indians not allowed “ was placed at both the ends of the promenade .It is said that Motilal Nehru the father of Pandit Jawahar Lal Nehru would always make it a point to violate the law and pay a hefty fine every time he visited Mussoorie.

I was visiting Mussoorie after a decade and a half. Last i was there for my Phase 3 training. As Probationers, our idea of Mussoorie was Physical Training and classes at The Lal Bahadur Shastri National Academy of Administration (LBSNAA) or “The Academy”, and pitchers full of beer at "The Traven". The Academy use to be "The Charleville Hotel" at some point in time. Late Mr.Monga our Course Co-coordinator was a 1974 batch IPS officer from the Nagaland cadre. A 6'5" hard core disciplinarian beast in the day, the widower would be a transformed angel in the night. Over a glass of Johnny Walker Blue Label he would sermonize us about Life, Women ,Integrity and Public service. A product of IIT Kanpur and an MBA from FMS, Delhi he had a theory that in life the presence of all four are inversely proportional to each other "ceteris paribus". The exclusive group of disciples privy to his transformed manifestation would mostly consist of probationers from Punjab and Haryana. For them Monga was no less than a rock star. Mr.Monga would divide the Foundation course probationers into three categories “Convent educated” “Rural educated” and the “Un-educated”. He believed that the last category score the highest in the UCPL examination. He was doubtful about the first category. He had high regards for the second category. Looking at the state in which our countrys development, law and order and foreign affairs is, he was absolutely certain about the last category. Mr.Monga believed that “The Academy” does attract some of the best talents of this country; he would qualify his stand and say “I repeat some”.

As for the “uneducated “ lot he would say “These scheming ,plotting, Machiavellian megalomaniacs live a fake life of denial and f….... self aggrandizement”. "Ha ". "In their cocooned sub conscience they suffer from a suppressed inferiority complex". "They hide it in arrogance and inaccessibility". "The last thing that these B..C.. can bear is criticism". "Haa ha ". With every glass of Jhonny Walker the Course Co-coordinators use of abuses would increase, so would the stretch of his laughter. "These M.....C...s get into pseudo intellectual arguments at the drop of a hat." "They say they know it all". "Haa ha ha". "They say they are the best". "Like some Ms.World contestant they never practice but preach charity,compassion,nation building and ways of the Mahatma". "They never speak but display networking,sucking up to seniors,licking up to politicians,greasing of the palm,and their two favorite anatomical specializations "stabbing the back"" and "losing the spine"".

Their f...... slogan in life is "we are the crème of this country”.

"Yeh B... C.... log, they don't even understand, the f..… creme is rotting fast". "It stinks"

"Uska to ab ghee bhi nahi ban sakta". "Haa ha ha ha."

I was told Mr.Monga had no friends left in the service. His only good friend Shobna Murthi, IAS 1974 and later Mrs.Monga had died in a militant ambush on Assam-Manipur highway many many years ago. He was now cynical about every thing in life. "The only reason present day batchmates seem to be friends now is to avail the Circuit House hospitality, if and when required ". " BC..how low things have come to "

As the Johnny Walker bottle reaches its base, he would turn to us and say "B.. C... ab tum sab so jaa o aur kal time say PT ground par aajana varna sab ki MC BC kardunga....Get out !!.

Late in the cold night, leaving the sloshed old man alone and rushing out from his sarkari bungalow we would still hear him mumble "Haa ha ha ha ...MC ..sari duniya...BC hai"

Travelling in Mussoorie, and reflecting on my eventful past, my secretariat present and the uncertain future, my own observations about the civil services are not in great deviance from that of Mr.Mongas. Over the years the Foundation days creme in me had dried and disappeared somewhere. Absence of creme however did not mean absence of dairy products in my life. With no spine,nor any creme left in me, all i find my self thinking is how to butter the Revenue minister for a good district posting.

It was in 1825 that Captain Young the founder of Mussoorie decided to make it into a summer getaway for the British Army . Today the reminiscent of the old Mussoorie exists only at Landour which is about 10 km from the Mall. While most writers and lovers of Mussoorie would associate the history of Mussoorie to the British ,one cannot miss the role of the American missionaries too. It was since the 1830s that the inflow of the Americans in Mussoorie specially the Landour area increased. The "Woodstock school "established in 1854 has been the Alma mater for generations of Americans .It was in Mussoorie that the Americans introduced Indians to the inseparable legendary Peanut butter. Till today one can come across popular local Peanut butter brands such as “Sunshine” and “Tangy” selling like hot cakes in shops all across Mussoorie ,Rajpur and Dehradun. While the hitherto details about Woodstock school ,and the Peanut butter were indeed delightful insights about Mussoories history, what intrigued me most was that in 1918 the place was also the birthplace of John Birch of the controversial John Birch Society. The society is known for its anti globalization and anti “One World Order” foreign policy of the USA propagated by the likes of George Bush. The all American members of the society believe that the world is controlled by a few members of a cabal who are on to bring the world under a single ruler to further their own commercial interests and in the process defying the original ideals of American constitution.

To reach Landour I had to take the steep twisted up hill road from the "Picture Place" end of the Mall Road. Manoeuvring through vehicles and tourist the journey up the steep road can be a real test of nerves for any driver. In hills they say the drivers should give way to the vehicles coming up the slope. A rule abhorred by all and sundry driving down from Landour. After driving up for half an hour I reached the local shoe market , originally established for the British army .In the market the skill full hands of the local cobblers can create Oxfords and Brogues of any size and variation. Here one can also get handcrafted , custom made shoes for ladies with designs copied from the latest Bollywood movies.

Chaar Dukaan, the first halt after crossing the "Sister Bazaar" is now my favorite spot in Mussoorie. To begin with, im told, the place had four small shops from where it got its name “Chaar Dukaan” or “Four Shops”. The place is famous for its Pancakes and hot coffee. On demand they serve hot bowls of "Maggie" too. Prakashji, the owner of the shop No 1 is assisted in his work by his wife and his father. Living there for the last 80 years Prakashjis grandfather was a postmaster for the British. Most of the customers at Chaar Dukaan are European students learning Hindi at the Landour Language School.

Beyond the Chaar Dukaan, towards the Lal Tibba and the ITM the approach is a cold, damp, secluded path with Himalayan Oaks and Pine tress on both sides of the walk. At Lal Tibba (7000 fts ) which is the highest peak in Mussoorie one gets a breathtaking panoramic view of the Himalayan peaks .On the way up I saw perhaps some of the most beautiful cottages in the country . The old British bungalows with English names like “Silver Oak” and “Old Mason” look secluded yet romantic .Outside every gate a board bewares visitors of the dogs inside. A little further on the right side of the road is the theater and movie actor Victor Banerjees house.Famous all over Mussoorie as the most beautiful house , the place, as visible from the outside, has beautiful terracotta colored brick and wood work with touches of Tibetan architecture on it. A little walk up ahead of the Banerjees road I came across an old cemetery. There frozen in time ,on the slope of the Landour Hill are the graves of earliest British residents of Mussoorie ,some as old as 200 yrs old. Each grave reading a tale of its own. The final inevitable destination of all our modern day maddening .

“BENEATH
ARE DEPOSITED THE REMAINS
OF
MY FOND ,MY BELOVED WIFE
ELIZABETH
WHO AT THE EARLY AGE OF
24 YEARS,
LEFT ME AND TWO
DARLING CHILDREN
FOR
ANOTHER AND BETTER WORLD
LANDOUR ,
SEPT 21ST 1846 M. FITZ MONK

There in the cemetery was on old Oak Tree with a metal plate on its base stating..

PLANTED BY
H.R.H.
DUKE OF EDINBURGH
Feb 1870.

It was towards the end of the walk that I came across Dev Dar hotel, my halt for the night. Named after a giant hundred year old Deodar tree in its backyard the hotel was built in the 1930s. The place originally built as a British bungalow was an orphanage before taking its present avatar 80 yrs back.A fog engulfing the hotel for most part of the year gives its other wise beautiful surroundings a lonely haunted appearance.With special discounts for students of the Landour language school, the 12 rooms of the hotel are packed with foreigners for most part of the year. With neither telephones nor televisions, hotel Dev Dar might not be everybody’s idea of a comfortable stay. For those seeking solitude and space there couldnt be a better place.The hotel has its own dinning hall, a small library and a restaurant. As probationers we would think that the only place in Mussoorie selling Pizzas were the shops at the Mall Road. At the hotel’s restaurant I discovered the best Pizzas that I had ever tasted in my life. The thick crust which melts in ones mouth can match in taste to any of the fancy Pizza shops in the metros.

Among the guests staying at the hotel with me was a middle age Sikh couple from Canada .The couple with a “ been there and done it “ like appearance about them were now looking forward to buying a house in Landour. Mussoorie and specially Landour in particular had off late seen a barrage of Land sharks enticing the locals with never before heard of offers. Back at the Chaar Dukaan, after learning that i was an old timer I.A.S. Prakashji confessed his recent moral dilemma to me .A businessman friend of a famous Indian cricketer had offered him the market price of the place plus monthly payment of all that he earns per month for the rest of his life. All i said was “ Prakashji do what your Pahaaldi heart tells you ,and nothing less" . I still don't know what i meant by that cryptic sentence but it did seem to have an effect on Prakashji. I could see sudden disappearance of freckles of worry from his face.

"Sirji ill boot the bastard out"." Sir ill kick his ass". "Ill hit him for a sixer to his friend in Bombay".

What happened next could be either ascribed to the sudden lack of oxygen at 6000 feet or the bitter "chaang" i bought from that Tibetan rack on The Mall Road. Sitting there at Chaar Dukaan with a smiling Prakashji next to me, I was jolted out of my secretariat pangs to see the angle faced Late Mr. Monga floating up among the Mussoorie clouds. As if this daylight hallucination of the giant after 25 years of last seeing him was not enough, i think i even heard him say "Yeh tunnay theek kiya B... C...."

Chapter 9: Mathemetics of Elections.

2009-05-08T10:04:00.000-07:00

"I was an Atheist, and then Elections happened".

Kangrachooolations sirjee Kangrachooolations !! that was how Mukesh Shrivatava first greeted me when I joined Bilaspur of the undivided MP as the DM. A frail old man of 56, Mukesh Shrivatava was the Assistant District Election Officer (ADEO) of Bilaspur. He had conducted 10 Parliamentary elections, 15 State Assembly elections and about 12 Gram panchayat elections. He had seen equal number of Collectors too. Each government getting its own set of blue eyed boys and girls. As an ADEO Mukesh Shrivastava would directly report to me, the Collector, who for election purposes is known as the District Elections Officer (DEO). All my learning in elections I attribute to him.

Mukesh Shrivastava would equate the whole process of Elections to that of a Swayamvara. The candidates as suitors would be wooing the voters as brides to cast their vote in his / her favour . Here gender is not important. Nor is the species. All suitors are at their animal best. I as the DEO play the role of the Best Man, ensuring that the bride goes to the most suitable suitor.

The ceremony begins with the DEO calculating the number of brides present to cast their vote. This in it self is a very tiring process involving statistical methods like intensive, summary or continuous revision. Sometimes a bride who’s name appears in the list has "passed away " so we fill his name in Form 7 and “delete “ him. Every year many 18 year plus boys and girls stake their claim for bride hood .They do this by filling Form 6. At times Mr Ahuja age 34 finds himself married to his 72 old father in the local election records. For their divorce they have to file their appeal in Form 8. Last elections the babu at the local election office forced Mrs.Ahuja to undergo a gender change. She resorted to the non surgical corrective method of applying through the same Form 8 .The operation was successful. So ..... once we are through with Form 6 ,Form 7, and Form 8 we have the sum total of all the "New" , "Dead" and " Corrected" brides. In Bilaspur we had 21,16,391 brides ready to cast their vote on the final day. Like gender, here polygyny too is not an issue.

Mukesh Shrivastava taught me that to know the whole spectacle of Indian elections one needs to understand the concept of a Polling station (PS), also known as a Booth, and its mathematical implications on Poll preparedness. 21 years since i last saw my maths teacher Ms.Rita from St Thomas High School estb 1916, Kasauli , the ghost of mathematics had come to haunt me again.

In Rural India one PS caters to the electorates of a big village or group of small villages .In the cities a PS has voters of few municipal wards within it . A PS can have a maximum of 1500 voters, the moment the number of voters in an area crosses 1500 you have a new PS. A group of Polling Stations make a Polling Station Location also known as Polling Centre. Normally a school or any government office is made into a PC. One, two or three (as the need arises) rooms of a School as a PS and the entire school as PC.

There are four officers in a PS looking after various well defined tasks. Now let us multiply the number of persons inside the PS by 2,786, that is the number of PS we had at Bilaspur. That gives us a total of 11,144 people to be deployed . Add 10% of this amount for the election staff to be kept as reserves. That gives us an army of about 11,300 people to conduct elections. For every PS take a formula 2X ( X being the number of PSs) of Police Personals and X of Home Guards. For Bilaspur it turned out to be 5572 of Armed Police men and 2786 Home Guards. Add to this the Paramilitary forces deployed. At Bilaspur we got 25 companies of Paramilitary forces. A company has 3 Platoons, one Platoon has 3 sections and one section has 8 men, plus some officers. Thus a company would have 72 persons.The ghost refused to die.

The total number of Personnel s deployed during the elections at Bilaspur was

Direct Polling Staff 11,144
Reserves 1,114
Armed Police Force 5,572
Home Guards 2,786
Paramilitary Forces 1,800

Total 22,416

These men further need transportation. A bus typically carries 56 people. By a rough estimate we needed 22,416 divided by say for easy calculation sake 50, which gives us 400 buses. In practice a district does not have so many buses, so we have to compensate this with small vehicles like minibuses, Jeeps etc. Sitting there in the cocooned comforts of my office i would play with figures, be it the number of EVMs, personnels deployed, stationary, election DA etc, all multriplied by the sacrocant 4*2786 +10%.

It wasn't until i visited one of the training sessions that i realised the grandeur of things i was dealing with. Hidden behind those numbers were 4*2786 +10% = 12,258 souls, each with his or her own reason and resentment as to why they should not be deployed for the election duty. Some even displayed erratic body symptoms, the diagnosis of which are yet to be discovered by modern medical science. One man reported temporary loss of his vision, a lady teacher suddenly realized that she was pregnant at 53. With the number of applications for medical leave increasing day by day i constituted a medical team under the CMO and some senior doctors from the District Hospital to verify the claims. My real worries started when the Chief Medical Officer himself started complaining of chest pain. Looking at all this, and coupled with the heat of the north Indian summer and perhaps of having a green horn, bewildered DEO boss like me, Mukesh Shrivastava too started complaining of erratic bouts of diarrhoea. A claim I had no means of cross checking.

There at Bilaspur, I had to be at my administrative and diplomatic best to get the work force of 12,258 perform the miracle without offending them. 12,258 people were divided into classes of 50 each that would mean 245 classes. Before the start of the Training 170 employees consisting of government Junior Engineers and staff from various development departments were trained as Master Trainers or Trainer of Trainers. Further each day 20 classes of 50 Polling Personnel’s were trained by these Master Trainers in the use of the EVMs and Process involved in Polling at the PS. This 12 day programme was further repeated to ensure quality of the programme.

It could be my befuddled reaction to the whole task at hand or the over zealousness on part of Mukesh Shrivastav , two weeks in the district Mukesh Shrivastava started treating me like his pupil .I had no choice but to surrender my ignorance. With the elections approaching near, the public in District Bilaspur witnessed widening of two things, the collectors eyes, and Mukesh Shrivastav 56 year old chest. My eyes because I was dazzled by the scale of things I was expected to do , Mukesh Shrivastav chest as he had a captive audience in the young District Collector. “Sirjee my father the late Santosh Shrivastava would say that ,God lies in details “."I have taken his advice as the guru mantra"."I suggest you too look at things a bit more in detail, It has never failed me ".

In order to prove his point Mukesh Shrivastava insisted that the collector must know all the items that the Polling Party carries on the day of the elections. He claimed that in order to conduct elections in one PS the four officers deputed need to have 80 items in that single bag on the day of the polls .Mukesh Shrivastava divided the entire bag into three main categories.

Forms
Envelopes
Stationary

Mukesh Shrivastava s hypnotism over me continued throughout the election period .One day i found my self in the Zila Panchayat store room submerged under heaps of election material. It took me a while to realize that i had just finished counting all the 80 items in the Polling bag .When I raised my head i could see 30 odd workers at the Zila Panchayat office looking at me with awe and amusement. The message that went out in the district was that the new collector is a very humble and hard working man.

With time , Mukesh Shrivastava and loads of divine intervention , the miracle of elections finally got over .The ruling party lost the Parliamentary elections from the Bilaspur constituency .I soon found myself posted at Bhopal looking after the Department of Animal Husbandry ,cows included. I couldn't meet Mukesh Shirvastava while leaving Bilaspur but i did miss him for few days.

The CMOs chest pain which i later learned was a 5 yearly occurrence also eased. The lady teacher it was later discovered had a problem of " gas ".The CMO certified it .Mukesh Shrivastavas erratic bowel movement too subsided after few days of the elections .He called me from Bilaspur to say Kangrachooolations sirjee Kangrachooolations !!.

Chapter 8: Datia ,Bundelkhand : First Posting

2008-10-10T07:40:00.000-07:00

मुत्थु चमार

Back in Kasauli every April i get to see miles of golden wheat fields ready for harvest.

In the drought hit district of Datia ,Buldelkhand i got to view the same miles of golden spread .Only the canvass morphed from wheat to dry parched fields of clay.The scorching heat added the golden glow.

Nature expressing prosperity and destruction in the same colour.

Mutthu chamars house lies at the end of the village Sikri Rehmanpur .With a population of just 12 families the nearst motorable road is 34 km away. Following the Jamabandhi system Mutthus landless ancesters had lived working on the local thakurs land .

In better times rain had been the only source of irrgation . Later days only a few had the courage to buy water @ Rs 300 per bhiga from the the thakurs tube well. Rs 1500 for the five waters of wheat was too expensive for the small farmers. Last few years the tube well too had dried up.

Seven years of crop failure and years of accumulated bank loans had however wiped out any difference between the thakurs and Mutthu.

Now they all stared at the same field and the same sky.

The executive engineer Tube Wells had declared Sikri Rehmanpur region as falling under Dark Zone.

शम्बु अहिरवाल

Shambu Ahirwal and his wife Shanti have been visiting the district hospital for months.
The government surgeon had been demanding Rs 2000 for the liver operation.

It had been after six months of being advised the operation that Shambu entered my office.His wife and his nephew lifted him as he was too weak to walk .Shambu was holding on to his wife with one hand while with the other he was hlding the urine bag with the pipe coming out of his body.He smelled of urine and dirt.At some point in life he must have been more human.The thin trasparent Dhoti did not hide his famished body.His thighs were as thin as the arms of a toddler and im sure there were as week too.

Most people measure experience by time but there are insights which one can gather not only by distance of age but by events of ones youth too.My experiences from such events in life ,such as my meetings with Shambu Ahirwal and Mutthu Chamar had taught me that human eyes are the best barometre of poverty , pain, hunger and fear.

His wife Shanti too was no different .I am sure a thorough examination would have revealed many ailments which were yet not diagnosed or was it thar Shanti could not afford to complain.By now the smell had become more stronger and so did shanbus pain.
To cut a long story short Shambu did survive , we did manage to save his life .Since then I have been posted at various places , at state ,at centre ,after my tiff with the revenue minister i went on a deputation to the LBSNAA Mussoorie, Somalia for my research during my MPA at JFK School Of Governance at Havard.After all these years of my life i still remember Shambu Ahirwal , of all i remeber his eyes.That day what shocked me was not the sight of Shambu Ahirwal holding on to Shanti with one hand and the pipe coming out of his body with the other. My mind was wondering to find an answer of what kept him alive till then? That day in Datia, Buldekhand looking into Shambu and Shantis eyes ,i had my second youth full realisation .Hope is the biggest asset of the poor.

मूलचंद निषाद

Mulchand Nishad waited outside the Chaturvedis house.
.
All his life his father Fakir chand Nishad and later he had worked at the Chaturvedis farm.
In the name of wages there were gunny bags of wheat or bajra .The chaturvedis had promised to pay the balance wages in cash the next harvest. Thay had said the same the previous harvest. Two weeks back Fakir chand Nishad died in penury.
For his father’s Tarevee Mulchand had to borrow Rs 45 from Arvind Gupta the local bania.

After waiting the whole day he sees Chaturvedi's eldest son Ashish Chaturvedi , coming out of the house.
.
“So Mulchand did you finish with your fathers tarevee?” .
.
“Sahib I don’t have any money left with me .Please give us our balance wages ,my family has nothing left to eat.”

“Mulchand your father was a good man, but with his death all issues of wages too are gone with him. You are a young man why don’t you start fresh. Ill see that my father pays you good for your young body”

(People in the village had been hearing about a young girl from village Shekpur Gulda in the neighboring district of Uttar Pradesh.The girl they heard had pronounced war cry against the upper caste Thakurs for their sins and oppression against her dignity.The last one had heard a womans war cry was that of the Raani of Jhansi. They called the young girl Phoolan )

With a dead father , wife and children sleeping on empty stomach Mulchands mind was swinging between despair and agitation. All he could remember was seeing the iron rod lying on the floor. He then saw his hands lifting it. He then saw it coming down hard on the eldest chaturvedi s son .In between his raised hand and the sahibs broken leg he managed to look into the young brahmins eyes. There in those eyes he saw not only fear but shock too .The iron rod did not only break a bone but also years of caste dominance ,oppression and injustice.

At the local thana the SHO R.P.Singh a Thakur ,broke all bones that Mulchand knew ever existed in his human body.

Five months later ,far away from Datia at a firing range in the jungles of Naxalbari comrade Sambhu was the first person Mutthu Chamar and Mulchand Nishad met .

District Training : Unlearnings at Tikamgarh

2008-09-30T11:49:00.000-07:00

Post my First Phase training at LBSNAA i joined Tikamgarh as a probationer for my District Training.Darwin was wrong when he said that we humans have evolved out of the monkeys. Some of us have yet not evolved. Infamous all over the state cadre for a PDS scam he was charged with quite early in his carrier, my first collector Prabha chand Pandey was one such Homo -homo sapiens. Three years to his retirement Pandeyji had always managed to retain plump postings irrespective of the party in power. His closeness to the owners of the big media houses of the state which were all owned by wealthy Brahmins added to his many advantages. Another similar character was the Tikamgarh CEO, Zila Parishad Mr. Sunder Lal Sharma. Both Pandey and Sharma shared a symbiotic relationship in their approach to the development programs in the district. I would visit the collectors camp office in the evenings to brief him about the days learning, often I would find Sunder Lal Sharma sitting alone with the DM in his office .The subject of their conversation would abruptly change on my arrival. Outside the room the orderly had been given strict instructions to tell the visitors that “sahib puja kar rahey hai”.They both had a fondness for safari suits. Another common trait between them was that they both dyed their hair . Pandey copper colour ,Sharma Jet black . After my District training at Tikamgarh I have taken it as a thumb rule in my professional life to suspect any officer who dyes his hair ,especially if the color is copper.

As a probationer at Tikamgarh the first place Prabha chand Pandey sent me for training was the English Office of the Tikamgarh collectorate. Heart of the collectorate the English office was a big hall with a barrage of babus with Ricardo typewriters dealing Judiciary, Records, correspondence from the CMs office , Normal Dak, Pensions of retired babus , treasury , Copier and many. After all these years the incidence i remember most from my probations days at Tikamgarh is the training at the collectorate record room .Stacked one over the other were hundreds of record files, some very old , earlier ones written in Urdu , than English and later records in Hindi. Among the various heads of the annual budget for the record room was a sum of Rs 2 for milk. Zaffar Iqbal the record keeper cum Urdu Translator informed me that back during the British days there were many cases of important land records being eaten up by rats in collectorates all across India . In 1937 one Willaim Borrow, an ICS officer at Madras who too was troubled by rats came up with a novel solution to the rodent menace. The sahib ordered the record keeper to hire the services of the biggest known natural enemy of the rat, a cat. The feline did live up to her food chain notoriety, and within a week the record room was free of all rodents. After the success story at the Madras collectorate a GO was passed to replicate the "Borrow Model " in collectorates all over India. Among the many legacies of the British Raj still existing in todays India, iam told ,the annual sum of Rs 2 for milk for the record room continues in most of the collectorates across the country.

Ber Sarai

2008-09-24T08:27:00.000-07:00

All roads to the UPSC pass through the Jawahar Book Depot . JBD is the must visit temple for all aspirants .After paying my regards and prayers i offered Rs 1500 to the priest and collected the cyclostyle copy of the latest readings on Psychology , Public Administration and General Studies.

These readings supplemeted by various journals , news papers and unsolicited preaching s from aspirants from UP and Bihar would be my company fr the next three years.

The land lord of House no 20 Shri.Lambardar insisted on an advance of Rs 2000 that is two months rent as security .The room was a 10 feet by 10 feet cubicle and that was it. Just an empty room. Rs 350 for a cot , 200 for mattress, 150 for tube lights , Rs 300 for a fan, by the end of the day i was poorer by rs 5000. At last i had a room.

For my morning breakfast i would queue outside a dhabha , Rs 5 for five puris and a leaf cup full of potatos plus RS1 for a glass of tea. This i would eat sitting on the steps of Jawahar Book Depot.
A "senior " bihari told me that 95% of the Indian civil servants have walked on those steps.

After few days i discovered "Kashmiri" the tiffin supplier . A migrant Pandit from Kasmir " kashmiri" i learned was supplying tiffins to 100 aspirants @ Rs 1000 for a months supply of lunch and dinner.That would mean a neat Rs 100,000 per month which was not a bad show for a migrant.
.
The tiffins would carry three Rotis , daal, Sabzi , Rice , few peices of cucumber , and some pickles. The only difference for dinner would be a different sabzi. Once a week Kashmiri would serve us with chicken too.Every after noon some kid ,most of them from Orissa ,would give a hard knock on the door of my room.By the time i would reach the door he would have disappeared leaving just the tiffin there an evidence of his visit.

There in the vastness of my room surrounded by Karl Marx and Kautaliya and the almighty Sigmund Freud i would finish my tiffin.
I would then leave the tiffin out side just as i found it.
After few months of reading Freud and may be due to the solitude of the 10 by 10 room i could see a stark resemblence in the Tiffin to that of a human Phallus.
By now i had realised that iam going to crack the Pyscho paper , my preparation was going in the right direction.

University of Delhi

2008-09-24T00:26:00.002-07:00

The other events of my school years were that of Appu and the Asian Games ,Maruti cars and Rajiv Gandhi,Mandal aggitation and three days of chutti we had at school because of that,Saddam Hussain invading Kuwait leading to Cable Television revolution in India. My father refusing to get a colour TV as for some reason he was convinced that colour TV leads to blindness.

I had scored 93.57% in my school finals .I got 78% in mathematics. Hindu college is hailed as the one of the best colleges in Asia. The cut off marks to get in to Hindu was 93.56%: in best of four subjects. Add 2 to it and u r in the hostel. Leaving mathematics out my marks totaled to 96%.My first memoirs of Hindu are that of walking through the hostel corridor with “Jadu-Teri-Nazar“and “Summer of 69 “blaring from different rooms.

My roommate Sawantha was a year senior to me. Sawantha was a Manipuri- Maitai. Maitais are the Hindu believers from Manipur living in the plains of Manipur. Sawantha would be always in the room, sleeping. Like me he had no visitors. His only visitor was “Jackie “the waiter from the Hindu college canteen. Sawantha's account in the canteen was running overdraft for many months.Whenever Jackie came to collect the canteen dues , Sawantha who was broke would say some thing in his own version of Manipuri Hindi. Jackie, who did not understand a word of what Sawantha said, would ask him for a Malana-joint cigarette. After sharing the joint Jackie would return to his canteen and Sawantha to his bed.

On days when he ran out of his pot of Marijuana, Sawantha would find solace in common cough syrups. The Phensidryl bottle on his table worked as a sand clock for me. Sawantha would finish a quarter of bottle in the morning before 10:00, half by afternoon 3:00 noon and the rest by the night. That’s when I would head for the Dinning hall.

It was after almost a year that for the first time Sawantha had a girl visitng our room. Sussna Pussapirtha, Sawantha's girl friend was a Mayanmarese student pursuing her M -Phil in Buddhist philosophy . A stunner Sussna Pussapirtha s visits meant me taking the undesired stroll to the hostel ground ,some times in the middle of 45 degrees .Her visits meant that the room needed to be freed of dust , cigarette butts ,Pornography both literature and videos and the phensidyrl bottles .Till today how and where Sawantha had met Sussna Pussapirtha for the first time has been the biggest mysteries of my life. As for the Buddhist Litreature, while I took the stoll or gate crashed into my neighbours room begging for an afternoon siesta ,behind the closed doors of my room Sawantha would be introducing Sussna Pussapirtha to Nirvana in his own ways. With time Sussna Pussapirtha's visits became more frequent which was a proof of Sawantha good service to the International relations between Myanmar and India and to the cause of Buddha.

If there is one thing that I won’t trade for anything in life it is my years at the DU. Delhi exposed me to the real world. Coming from a small town like Kasauli I had never known what a burger is. I still remember the day Martha took me to the Kamla Nagar Nirulas. I was sweating in the AC air of Nirulas. Short skirts and Burgers were both new things to me. Kamla Nagar later known as “ K, Nags “ had excess of both. In two weeks I had become familiar to Burgers, Tabasco sauce, Banana Split Sunday, Jon Bon Jovi and many types of Mini skirts.

Transportation within and from Delhi University was always free; all you had to say was “staff” to the Red line bus conductor. I’m told our seniors and their seniors had sacrificed many a classes and tutorials for the “Staff “status. They fought their battle out on the Mall Road: stoning the Red Line busses, burning them, beating the Jat drivers and conductors and in return being thrashed by the Jat constable of the Delhi Police aided by the Jat conductors and drivers.The Jat conductor would look us up and down and count heads and let go.Those years were full of fun. Momos at Majnu - ka -Tila, followed by a Jug of Chang, Shopping at Ladakh- Buddha- Vihara: Monastery, lining up for the Rs 11 front stall tickets at Priya cinema, Parathas at the JNU Ganga Dabha, and night ice creams at the India Gate.

Those days I could have hardly imagined that the last two spots JNU and UPSC at India Gate would be such important places for me in my future years of struggle.

The other events of my college years were MTV leading to ward robe confusion among the indian girls , if i had my way i would have declared the whole confusion as a national emergency.You think im exaggerating ? you had to be there walking on Mall Road in 1993 to know what iam talking about .Every thing was being passed off as fashion .Two spiritual events that co incided with my college days were that of all the Ganeshas in the country including the one at Vijay colony Delhi University drinking milk for some un explainable reason and the other was that of a 19 year old boy named Sachin Ramesh Tendular being declared as God by millions of people world over.

1999 I passed my graduation with 43%. Just managed to pass the pole. A third division which I attribute to my hours of partying , drinking ,endless boxing practice in the college gym and Sonia ( B-Com FY ) , Mona ( B Com SY ) and Priyanka ( in my final Year ) . My achievements would not have taken me through any of the campus placements nor in to any good B-School. Those days graduates with nowhere else to go were either sitting for the LLB entrance exam or the UPSC.I decided to try my luck at the civil services.

Girls

2008-09-24T00:26:00.001-07:00

I was in class 6th when I first started acknowledging girls b..... I don’t remember the trigger but I still remember the effect. One fine afternoon at school it dawned on me that girls have guess what ? B...... How come I never realize it before? The moment I see a girl at school, that meant almost every time I could literally hear the booby sound. The sound did not spare my class teacher Ms.Rita too, hers made the maximum noise. Being older she had this advantage.Gradually the noise spread from my school to my neighborhood, to the market, to my work, the television, movies and my dreams too. In all these years in spite of my best intentions that booby noise has still not subsided. I hear them every now and then when I see a beautiful woman. Looking back it seems that, that day at school was my first step into a strange, confusing world. A booby world. That afternoon at school I lost my innocence, the peace of my sub consciousness, my ignorance. I traveled into a world full of booby traps. I was a slimy loser now.

Parents

2008-09-24T00:25:00.001-07:00

My father wanted me to be a doctor. As a three year old all I ever wanted to be was a Guard at the Savitri Cinema Hall , Kasauli .To my young impressionable mind the Guard at Savitri Cinema could watch all the movies including King Kong ,Charlie Chaplin and Laurel and Hardy throughout the year. He therefore had to be the most powerful man in the world. He could even stop papa and us from entering the hall.

At 10, my dreams changed , now I wanted to be a Truck Driver .What a wonderful life a Truck Driver lives. He travels all across the world .Dines Chicken where ever he wants .Gets to drive a powerful truck .Even dad was afraid of bringing his new Ambassador car near any truck . I had seen pictures of beautiful girls on the trucks body .I knew all those beautiful girls were his .

It was around the age of 15 that i wanted to be a soldier in the army .I would stand erect and salute whenever they showed the national flag on TV. My sister my parents and my sisters would laugh at me. Sita is my half sister from my father’s first marriage; she is 7 years older than Martha who is my elder sister. Im 53. I could have been a Colonel by now. Calculus with its differentiation and Integration is the cause of me not clearing my Army entrance examination. I could never understand mathematics .My parents could never understand me.

Childhood

2008-09-24T00:23:00.000-07:00

All the years of rot had taken a toll on my health. Late night duties , clearing of files , the "best whisky for sahib " and Wills Navycut "the perfect blend of filter and tobacco" had not done any good to my health.Like most people around me , i use to believe that iam where iam because i wanted it to be so .The job iam in , the wife im married to , the house i live in , the friends i have, the car i drive, the toilet seat i graced every morning , and at times at night. Like most people around me i fooled my self , almost daily. From the time i woke up till the time i hit the bed. Some times even in my dreams. Dreams however are bound to be shattered . Realisation , Freedom , Moksha they say is always around the conner.Most of us close our eyes to that turn .It was 3:30 in the morning , i woke up with a heavy pain in my chest. All i could remember is that i called for Sunder , my servant .The next day it was in the local newspapers . The Principal Secretary , Health, survives a massive heart attack.The next two weeks i spent reflecting on my life.

The first time I caught the entire schools attention was during the annual school elocution competition at St Thomas Inter College, Est. 1916 , Kasauli. What my teachers think of me? Well to begin with nothing. For them I did not exist. There I stood face to face with 500 students, 23 teachers, Ms Rita my class teacher, the vice principal Ms Shepard, and the scary Mr.Baans, the principal. That day on the stage, I forgot my lines, never to remember them again. It was (500+23+1+1+1)*2 =1052 eyes staring at me. First shocked, then amused, gradually mocking to finally full blown laughter. That day I lost my anonymity at St Thomas High School, est. 1916 and gained my title Mr. Loser.