2 Faces of Reform Rajya

‘‘I’m waiting for my final MBBS results,’’ she says shyly in flawless English. ‘‘My father has been through this with me, so now he’s advising others.’’

Menaz is just one of an exploding bunch of success stories pouring out from the lanes of bylanes of Hubli, once a riot-torn town where people were regularly hacked to death in the 1990s because of a bloody fight over the local BJP’s attempt to celebrate independence day in a Muslim prayer ground.

The 1990s were also a time when the economy grew around them. Hubli’s people saw the step-ladder set up and began the climb. Education flourished and they grabbed job opportunities substantially diverse from the great tech employment agency 400 km down south in Bangalore.

Menaz had no role models, but what she did have was a grandfather and father determined to make her a doctor, a big ambition in a Muslim community that until a decade ago mostly frowned at female education. Now Menaz and others like her are role models as Muslim girls fill the schools — and exam ranks. Menaz has two younger brothers. One is an auto engineer in Pune, and the other works with his father in the pump-nozzle workshop.

It’s been a rough — but inspiring — road. The Rs 30,000 for her first year at a Pune med school was paid for by her father and teachers at her junior college, the Nehru Arts and Science College run by the local Anjuman-e-Islam. ‘‘When I started losing heart,’’ explains Mahaldar, ‘‘the Anjuman stepped in.’’ In the second year, Menaz got a rank, and college became fee-free.

Now Mahaldar tells his daughter that once she begins working, she must pay back all that the Anjuman contributed. ‘‘After all,’’ he says firmly, ‘‘others like her must get a chance.’’

And marriage? Well, there’s already an offer from a family settled in London. Mahaldar wants his daughter to decide, but he’s enthusiastic because of one critical reason: they want her to study further. ‘‘Unho bole aage badhon (they told her march ahead),’’ he says in Dakhni, the local Urdu patois.

What does Menaz say? ‘‘Whatever they decide,’’ she says shyly as father and her hazel-eyed mother blush. And what if someone they decided on was to say no to further studies, her dream, gynaecology? For once, her eyes narrow, and her face hardens. ‘‘Then,’’ she says, ‘‘I will say no. Never.’’

Bt cotton today, BITS tomorrow

SONU CHHINA
PONNARI (ADILABAD DIST) ANDHRA PRADESH

AT Adilabad, the second biggest cotton market of the country, the mercury has touched 44 degrees Centigrade. Seven km off the buttersmooth National Highway No 7, in a village of alabaster white mud walls, ferozi blue doors and red Mangalore tiles, Thirupathi Reddy (50) is the picture of cool. In a couple of months, when the temperature is in the late forties, he will sow 20 acres with cotton.

‘‘Last year was great,’’ he grins sitting on a plastic chair with his friends in the century-old Panchayat hut. He and three others from Ponnari braved government warnings and sowed 10 acres with Bt cotton seed, that costs four times the regular variety, to get a bumper yield of 10 tonnes/acre.

The Bt variety of cotton, genetically modified by Monsanto to make it pest-resistant, has a history of controversy in India. In fact, right here in Ponnari four years ago, the first Bt patch was burnt by activists. A year later, the dreaded bollworm attacked the cotton flower and nobody got more than three quintals an acre. Next time, a few tried Bt, but a cheaper, less-effective grade. Their produce tanked.

Last year, Reddy went by the Bt book and turned the tide. ‘‘From four last year, it will be 20 acres this time,’’ he says. Looking at him, almost 25 cultivators will sow over 500 acres. From the younger, small farmer like Tirman Reddy (25), who owns eight acres, to the more cautious Srinivas Reddy (52). ‘‘It is expensive, but you save on the pesticide,’’ says Srinivas.

The farmer sprays the crop thrice instead of 10-12 times with the regular variety. It means Thirupathi Reddy’s wife Indubai will have to buy real buckets this year instead of re-using the big pesticide containers. She is not complaining. From last year’s earnings, they bought a Maruti 800 so that their grandson Kartik (17), who studies in a Hyderabad boarding school, could travel the 300 km in comfort. She beams with pride about the fixed deposits for the granddaughter Priyanka (15), a gold medallist in Class X, who lives with her father in Adilabad city.

The only concessions to modernity in the house are a watercooler, a TV and a gas burner. No fridge, no mixer in the kitchen. The grandparents are saving it all up.

In the middle of a lunch of weak yellow dal, rice and pickle, the electricity goes. Indubai says: ‘‘We get power for just six hours a day.’’

Here lies the reason for the election choice of the 1,700 voters in Ponnari — the Congress. ‘‘When they were in power, we used to get much more. They have promised free electricity. If it came for more hours, I would sow 10 — not two — acres of red gram.’’ That’s his intermediate crop.

‘‘Chandrababu Naidu’s government has done nothing for the farmer. The Congress was responsible for all the big projects like Sri Ram Sagar Project and Nagarjuna. This government has only done computers and the high-tech city, and it has wasted all the money on advertisement. (Then there’s the lifting of prohibition.) My labourers, who earn Rs 50 a day, now spend half of that on booze.’’

Thirupathi Reddy prepares for a visit to his granddaughter in the city by changing his immaculate white dhoti and shirt for a freshly ironed set. As his fields whiz by, he says he remembers a childhood when most of the landscape was a teak forest.

Priyanka is at home with her friends. The shelves are stacked with books and months of newspapers. President APJ Kalam grins from a photograph on the wall, next to which is a white board with unsolved algorithm problems scribbled in black pen. Her father Ganga Reddy teaches nearly 100 children everyday. An impressive number make it to engineering colleges.

‘‘I love to solve problems, it does not require mugging. I love trigonometry. My first goal is to go to BITS Pilani,’’ says Priyanka, pulling a face when her grandfather brags about the gold medal. She has chosen Math, Physics and Chemistry after her Class X. Chess is her favourite pastime. ‘‘Last year Snigdha (one of her father’s students) joined BITS. I will go too.’’

Adilabad is smaller than most towns and Priyanka exudes more confidence than any brat from Delhi or Bombay. ‘‘Everybody should realise there is a person called Priyanka. I want to be known by my name and not that of my father or grandfather.’’

Her opinions are as definite on politics. ‘‘I like Indira Gandhi, I prefer the Congress. She started the five-year plans. Garibi Hatao.’’ Priyanka sounds like she has spent too much time at the office of her relatives who are fighting the election. Naidu? ‘‘Oh, he is good too. They are equally good. He has done so much.’’

But she wants to do more. Software engineer? ‘‘Maybe.’’ Will you go abroad? ‘‘Why not? I will definitely go,’’ she flashes her first grin. Then she looks sideways at her grandfather and says: ‘‘But my family may not be for it.’’

The grandfather who hasn’t travelled beyond Tirupati in the east to Ajanta and Ellora in the west, says with composure: ‘‘Of course, you will go.’’

The road ends here, hope too

SAMAR HALARNKAR
KALASI (KARWAR DIST) KARNATAKA

SUBHA Bondu Siddhi lives at the end of the road. Literally.

Super-smooth national highway 63 is an hour away — and a dim memory. At the end of a two-hour walk on a stone-littered forest track off NH 63, is the unknown village of Kalasi. At the end of Kalasi, in splendid isolation at the foot of a lush hill of sal forests, is Bondu Siddhi’s two-room mud-and-thatch home.

Clad in only a lungi, the 26-year-old sighs as little Nagesha (6) begins throwing a tantrum. ‘‘He wants my pen,’’ Bondu Siddhi says exasperatedly. Offered the reporter’s pen, Nagesha stops wailing, considers, and begins wailing again. ‘‘No, I want your pen,’’ he bawls to his father.

Nagesha and elder brother Shekhara (7) both go to school. Bondu Siddhi wants them to learn, ‘‘so they can leave here’’. A 20-minute walk down the road from Bondu Sidhhi’s house is the Kalasi Kannada primary school, a bright, new two-room affair with lovely red tiles and yellow walls. But the boys have 15 days holiday for every four days of studies. That’s how often the lone teacher actually shows up. ‘‘So I don’t really know what kind of an education they’re getting,’’ sighs Bondu Siddhi, who studied till the third standard himself and now survives by doing odd jobs and selling coconuts from his parking-lot sized plantation.

Karnataka’s crippling three-year drought has struck here too, in the midst of the sal forests. Fires have blackened the undergrowth and every stream is bone dry. There is a river running by — well, an hour’s walk away — but too far to be of any use. Bondu Siddhi’s rice fields are long dead, and the drastic reduction in rainfall over the past decade has almost killed every plantation in the area. Food is now uncertain. ‘‘Sometimes we eat, sometimes we don’t,’’ he says without rancour.

Ask him about elections, and for the first time, his blandness dies. ‘‘They always come,’’ he says angrily of politicians. ‘‘They all came this year, all of them, every party. They made all the promises, the same ones.’’ He gestures to the baking land outside. ‘‘But I’ve never seen anything from them.’’

On the wall a poster declares Vanvasi Kalyan. Desh dharma sanskriti ke liye jiye jin par hame garv hai. National duty must live for culture that we are proud of. ‘‘Oh yes,’’ shrugs Bondu Siddhi, ‘‘They come too with these leaflets, but who are they?’’

There is a bus to Kalasi, but it arrives at 8 pm, and stops outside the house of the Bhat, the village headman. Despairing of the local school, Bondu Siddhi and his wife explain how they would like to eventually send their sons to Mungod, 25 km away. ‘‘If this goes on,’’ says the otherwise quiet Laxmi, ‘‘we’ll have to put them in the hostel there.’’

But there are further worries. ‘‘We will have to supply everything at that place, oil for cooking their food, soap, everything. How can we afford that?’’

Here in the district where India’s largest naval base is taking shape, the dreams of those on the margins do not even manage to flutter off the ground. Bondu Siddhi is a disadvantaged tribal of the Siddhi community, escaped or freed slaves of Ethiopian origin who settled many generations ago in the Western Ghats. He speaks Konkani with wife Laxmi and the boys, but he also knows Kannada (he gets a Kannada paper when he goes to town) and some Marathi. Chief Minister S M Krishna’s tech dreamland isn’t something he’s familiar with. But Bondu Siddhi, as he keeps saying, has his dreams. That’s why he’s got electricity in his little shack. That’s why he somehow musters the Rs 400 that he pays for six hours of power. That’s why despite his despair, despite the fact that he can do nothing about it right now, he keeps dreaming the big dream: an education for his children.

Has he seen Bangalore? Bondu Siddhi laughs. ‘‘I’ve heard about it,’’ he says, then adds helpfully, ‘‘Once a year, I go to Hubli (two hours away). That is the furthest we’ve been.’’

Parched earth, parched faith

SONU CHHINA YEDIRA
(MAHBOOBNAGAR DIST) ANDHRA PRADESH

IT’S dusk and exactly 100 km from the dazzling lights of Cyberabad, this village off NH 7 is lit by a lone polestar. M Shivaram (42), the owner of 28 acres of land, is building a fence around his parched field. Tomorrow, he is going to town in search of manual work.

Welcome to the labour district of the country. There is little water (for drinking, leave alone farming), power for just three hours a day and no factories to work in. Up north in Adilabad, the very same people become the footsoldiers of the Naxal movement.

The 500-odd acres under cultivation in this village are shrinking. Every year, 20-25 families give up on farming and travel in groups to Hyderabad, Mumbai, Guntur and Bangalore to find manual work to feed themselves.

They leave behind abandoned fields where the earth hardens and, slowly, that hardy desert tree, acacia, grows.

A Chinnaramulu (38), who owns two acres, grows castor and is out most part of the year to work on roads, talaos and houses. The contractor gives him Rs 70 a day and his wife Rs 50 a day. The skin on his feet is impossibly cracked.

He has five daughters and a son. Ages 19, 12, 10, 8, 6 and 2. The eldest is married and for six months, the 12-year-old gets Rs 20 for eight hours of sitting in a group of village children sorting cotton seeds.

Last night, one of the farmers in the village bored 300 feet into the earth and there was no water. Instead, the drilling rod broke. In Mahboobnagar, water lies at an average depth of 400 feet. The village is flanked by big pipes from Godavari and Krishna, all of which carry water to Hyderabad and other towns.

‘‘Mahboobnagar is in the middle and the pipes bypass us!’’ exclaims retired fauji T Hanumanth (39), the only sober man sitting outside the village teashop. He was an aero-engine fitter in Army Aviation.

This irony is the grudge of Telengana against any government in power at Hyderabad. Since Independence, the northern part of the state has felt unwanted and sought separate statehood. No government has done anything to lift it from its backwardness.

The movement became an academic debate after the 1960s, but now the Telengana Rashtra Samiti (TRS), which has tied up with the Congress, is swinging the entire region to its side. In fact N Chandrababu Naidu, who has always advocated a unified state, is gritting his teeth as even his BJP ally talks separate statehood.

‘‘All IAS and IPS posts are for coastal Andhra. There is no employment here, no cotton mills. Look at the kutcha road to the village.’’ As the drunks interrupt him several times in one sentence, Hanumanth gets up to leave for home.

It’s a pucca house and this family of five barely survives on the monthly pension of Rs 2,000. He took loans for seed, fertiliser and bullocks on rent to plough his five acres. ‘‘It’s like Rajasthan,’’ says Hanumanth who has seen almost all the country with postings in Jammu and Kashmir, Nagaland, Arunachal Pradesh.

‘‘If Uttaranchal, Jharkhand and Chhattisgarh can happen, why not Telengana? If Telengana is separated, it will get more funds from the budget. There will be more factories,’’ he declares with confidence.

His brother T Thanmmaiah, a schoolteacher who faces a near total rate of dropouts by Class X, says: ‘‘Hyderabad is so well developed. In villages there is no change.’’

The brothers say Naidu’s Janmabhumi scheme for micro-plan development is for party workers and ‘‘not for ordinary people like us’’. Their wives got sick of the Self Help Groups as some members never returned the kitty money.

It’s dinnertime and the deafening wedding music being played by the neighbours just got louder. At the entrance of the wedding house, there is a group of 30 in colourful saris and jewellery, in various stages of drunkenness.

An argument has just erupted. Some say the TRS distributed Rs 50 per person tonight. That’s how they bought the liquor.

The other group is calling them ungrateful. It was Rs 100, they insist.