Deprecated (16384): The ArrayAccess methods will be removed in 4.0.0.Use getParam(), getData() and getQuery() instead. - /home/brlfuser/public_html/src/Controller/ArtileDetailController.php, line: 150
 You can disable deprecation warnings by setting `Error.errorLevel` to `E_ALL & ~E_USER_DEPRECATED` in your config/app.php. [CORE/src/Core/functions.php, line 311]
Deprecated (16384): The ArrayAccess methods will be removed in 4.0.0.Use getParam(), getData() and getQuery() instead. - /home/brlfuser/public_html/src/Controller/ArtileDetailController.php, line: 151
 You can disable deprecation warnings by setting `Error.errorLevel` to `E_ALL & ~E_USER_DEPRECATED` in your config/app.php. [CORE/src/Core/functions.php, line 311]
Warning (512): Unable to emit headers. Headers sent in file=/home/brlfuser/public_html/vendor/cakephp/cakephp/src/Error/Debugger.php line=853 [CORE/src/Http/ResponseEmitter.php, line 48]
Warning (2): Cannot modify header information - headers already sent by (output started at /home/brlfuser/public_html/vendor/cakephp/cakephp/src/Error/Debugger.php:853) [CORE/src/Http/ResponseEmitter.php, line 148]
Warning (2): Cannot modify header information - headers already sent by (output started at /home/brlfuser/public_html/vendor/cakephp/cakephp/src/Error/Debugger.php:853) [CORE/src/Http/ResponseEmitter.php, line 181]
LATEST NEWS UPDATES | Super-sensitive, not to bitter root by Biswanath Roy and Sujan Dutta

Super-sensitive, not to bitter root by Biswanath Roy and Sujan Dutta

Share this article Share this article
published Published on May 9, 2011   modified Modified on May 9, 2011
Gethi is such an inedible beetroot for most of us that it must be boiled overnight and dried thrice before the bitterness can be cut. Even after that, the faces of children pucker as soon as they put it in the mouth.

A gethi looks like a misshapen potato with dark brown hairy strands that must be plucked clean. The Pahariyas of Borogora village in the lap of the Bagmundi jungles in Purulia’s Ayodhya Hills survive on the gethi.

India and Bengal have seceded from Borogora.

You have read of it before, in these pages of The Telegraph. But that was almost three elections ago.

The gethi is still eaten and the faces still contort and most of the Pahariyas still do not know who Jyoti Basu was or who Mamata Banerjee is. Only one person said he had “heard” of the Trinamul Congress leader.

Borogora is a village in Jungle Mahal with two election booths 3km uphill that are categorised “super-sensitive”. Polling will be held on Tuesday during the last phase of the Bengal elections.

Motor vehicles can reach the last point on the road to Borogora from Purulia town in an hour. After that it is a 2km walk downhill and uphill, past the only source of water — a seasonal rivulet — for the men, women, children, goats and sheep of the village to wash, cook and clean in.

Diarrhoea is rampant.

Elections have come to Borogora again with the promise that the villagers will get about Rs 20 each from the Forward Bloc, which hopes to win the Bagmundi seat in which the village falls. It will take Borogora’s voters a full day to exercise their franchise. The money that has been promised will barely be enough for a bottle (of liquor) and there will be none left to buy rice.

On a hot afternoon in Borogora, three days before the May 10 poll, most of its adults surround us. The last time a bhadralok had visited, it was a block development officer about two months ago.

The elders are eager to give their names because they want to be entitled to any dole that could be coming: Netai and Ratan and Lakhiram Pahariya, Ghasini and Thakurmoni Pahariya, Adhar Pahariya and Chandana Pahariya. Netai and Thakurmoni look like they are the eldest.

It is pointless asking them their age. They are all illiterate. They are all skin and bones. But they have all voted in the past.

In the past two years, they have got job cards — under the National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme — that they hand to a leader who comes by occasionally. The “leader” goes to Ayodhya and collects the money. The people of Borogora do not have cycles and are mostly too frail and too tired to walk up and down 8km. In any case, they do not know the formalities of getting money from the post office.

It is also two years since the ojha — the witch doctor — has died.

“He was good at ridding us of ghosts but not good at medicating us,” says Netai and the others guffaw.

The Pahariyas of Borogora make brooms and ropes out of the babui grass. They catch rabbits and, if lucky, peacocks. They have been promised blankets and clothes.

“The votebabus (the term is not used sarcastically) come here and go away.”

Borogora cannot be described as an inaccessible village. The Urma railway station is just about 14km from here; the primary health centre about 18km. Too far for the villagers but within easy reach of administrations that claim to run such faraway countries like Bengal and India.

A police officer, Soumyajit Basu, and a geography teacher, Partho Biswas, were suspected to have been kidnapped from Borogora village on October 22, 2010. Their bodies were found at the village of Chhatrajera near Borogora about three weeks later. The police alleged it was the work of Maoists.

Three months ago, the police came to the village.

Adhar says one of the policemen dug a rifle into his backside and another held a pistol to his chest. They were asking after Maobadis.

“We have seen them this way and that,” he points to the surrounding hills. “But they have nothing to do with us.”

Even the Maoists appear to have seceded from Borogora.

The Telegraph, 9 May, 2011, http://telegraphindia.com/1110509/jsp/frontpage/story_13958275.jsp


Related Articles

 

Write Comments

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

*

Video Archives

Archives

share on Facebook
Twitter
RSS
Feedback
Read Later

Contact Form

Please enter security code
      Close