On Monday, 16 July 2001 22:37:39 UTC+10, Arindam Banerjee wrote:

About the poorest of the poor in India.

by Bani Kumar Banerjee

Though officially more than three hundred million people in India live below the poverty line - not having even two square meals a day, let alone proper housing, medicare, education or clothes - there are eight million tribals,
or aborigines, who do not get even one square meal a day. They are the so-called primitive tribes, namely, Sabar, Birhore, Ho, Pahariya, etc.; most of them live in the newly-created Jharkhand state of India.

Once there was an epidemic of pyogenic meningitis in the Noamundi area of West Singhbhum district of Jharkhand in 1991-92. A relief team of doctors was sent there by Bharat Sevashram Sangha of which I was a member. I was appalled to see people dying without any medicare. Some of those, who ventured to report to us, eluding witch-doctors, were saved. All around the people were starving as their main occupation - felling of trees by forest contractors (mostly illegal) - came to a halt because of that epidemic.

We were distributing two kilos of rice per head when an old, scantily clad woman wanted her daughter's share too. When we demanded her physical presence, she said something almost inaudibly, in her own language. Another man present there volunteered to explain the reason for her daughter's absence - because she had no clothes on. Upon her mother's return to their hovel (an inverted U-shaped contraption for a dwelling made of bamboo
sticks and thatch) she could come to claim her share.

The same day, when we were returning to our camp, after distributing rice,
we met a woman whose husband had starved to death only the day before. We opened a sack of rice and gave her some. She was very happy - her face glowing with pleasure at the prospect of getting hot rice to eat. By that time, she had overcome her grief but casually mentioned that if she got the rice the day before, perhaps her husband would have been alive.

In 1993, the Bharat Sevashram Sangha set up a hospital in the district of Ea st Singbhum to help tribals suffering from tuberculosis which was taking a heavy toll of tribals. Most of the patients would start early morning and trudge ten to twenty kilometers across hills and valleys to get free medicines from us. But when they would register some improvement, most of them would drop out and start working as casual labour if there was any opportunity or would cut firewood and sell headloads for a miserable pittance. They have simply nothing to fall back upon.

We look after a few colonies of primitive tribes at Bhadua, Haludboni, Chatardanga, Ramchandrapur, etc. all in the Ghatsila block of East Singbhum. These colonies are supposed to be looked after by the Govt. but except for some makeshift structures for their accomodation (without doors and windows, and even floors) they have not provided these tribals with anything to generate income from: result - they would either have to work as casual labour if they get an opportunity or cut down firewood for a living. Literally, they exist from one uncertain meal to another.

I may cite one more example. Recently there was some festivities in our campus. We arranged for treating the people of adjoining villages numbering 5000 to a meal of boiled rice and lentils. But word spread out, and we had to feed nearly ten thousand people coming all the way from distances of even twenty kilometers. Such is the extent of poverty!

There is an internationl organisation by the name of HelpAge. We look after fifty old men and women sponsored by them. We were asked to fill some forms giving their particulars such as age, marital and financial status, extent
of poverty as also what they would like to eat on special occasions (evidently to be provided by the sponsor), and all of them, without a single exception, said they would like to eat plates of hot boiled rice!

Despite their acute poverty, they are hardworking and scrupulously honest.
As contract labour, they get only Rupees twenty three rupees a day
(amounting to US $0.5, or hardly two kilos of rice) for working full eight hours, against the stipulated rate (set by Govt.) of Rupees forty. Still, ungrudgingly, without any supervision whatsoever, they would do their allocated work to the full satisfaction of the contractor.

These people are simply ignorant about the ways of the world, so they must die and make way for clever people. Our United Nations has rightly declared some species as endangered and made provisions for their
preservation. It also declares some monuments as heritage so that the
Govts. concerned take measures for their upkeep. However, even the United Nations has totally neglected these people.

These primitive tribes possess and also solely represent the ancient values which sustained human existence for tens of thousands of years, prior to the modern civilisation process which is now killing them. The qualities of staying together in peace and brotherhood; caring for their brethren and sharing whatever they have with them; lack of greed and other vices; a
great, intense, inner joy; a love for nature leading to music and dancing - will be lost with their extinction. With their gradual and inexorable extinction, mankind, or what will pass for mankind, will be all the poorer.

*******

Shri Bani Kumar Banerjee has been living in the state of Jharkhand for the last forty years. He was the Public Relations Officer of the Heavy Engineering Corporation in Ranchi till his retirement in 1984. Since then, till the present, he has been working as a voluntary social worker under the auspices of the Bharat Sevashram Sangha.
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Prior to Independence, the primitive tribals about whom Shri Bani Kumar Banerjee has written in the above article, lived in peace and happiness in their still undestroyed forests. After 1947, with the vanishing of the feudal and imperial political systems that protected them, they have had nothing but suffering and degradation. Their entire way of life has been uprooted in the name of progress and modernisation. Mining and farming pressures add on to the interests of the venal contractors, who have done their best, using modern technology, to destroy the forests without any attempt at regrowth. These activities have spread all over India - even the Himalayas are getting rapidly denuded. While a select few do benefit from this rapacity, the rest suffer from this denudation: floods create havoc every year; wildlife and the joy they bring get rarer, creating an increasingly mechanical world; rivers get silted up, and life of hydro-electric projects get reduced; forest produce becomes more scanty, creating increasingly less diversity and thus decreasing resilience against known and so far unknown perils. The uncontrolled forest stands for genuine freedom - with its destruction the only "joys" humans can know will be artificial, or human-controlled. No doubt people will have unlimited opportunity to stare at computer screens; but what they see will have increasingly low artistic quality, inevitably leading to overall degeneration.

It is thus wrong to think that economic progress and human happiness can
only come from destroying the forests.

What is most necessary is to start a highly active and effective policy of aforestation, directly involving the primitive tribals. This should be initiated from the very highest level. The destroyed forests must be rebuilt, with the help of the tribals. Their ancient ways must be restored.

Arindam Banerjee.

Those were the days! Thanks to my father's initiatives, and aided by many good people, with the Govt. also pitching in with many employment generation and poverty alleviation schemes, the whole area has improved considerably.

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