Smell a rat?

This crowded three-storey building at Sheikpura on Patna’s Bailley Road could well be the monument to Laloo’s social justice gone ...

This crowded three-storey building at Sheikpura on Patna’s Bailley Road could well be the monument to Laloo’s social justice gone awry.

Inaugurated by Laloo himself with much fanfare in 1992, this permanent shelter for 48 families of Musahars — the lower Dalits named after their vocation of hunting rats — used to be Laloo’s favorite show-piece on the working of the gareeb ka raj. Over the past decade of Laloo raj, each of the original families here has multiplied, turning the building into a multi-storey slum, a symbol of failed symbolism. And for the 30 lakh Musahars of Bihar, social justice has not yet been delivered.

Ask the 50 Musahar families in Lohanipur, another locality in the city, who were evicted from the land they have been occupying for three generations on April 19 on a court order. ‘‘We had no idea that there was a case on our land,’’ says Budu Majhi. They were evicted without a notice. Budu’s three-year-old son died of heat stroke and now they are braving the monsoon rains, on the road. ‘‘The most disturbing factor is they all have land records proving their ownership rights. But they had no opportunity to defend their case,’’ says state general secretary of PUCL, Kishori Das.

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Their habit of eating rats has earned the Musahars the attention of the international media and social reformers, both fake and genuine. But things have not moved a bit for them. ‘‘Hardly anything,’’ says Fr Philip Manthara who has worked with them for 25 years.

With an average literacy of 2.9 per cent, the Musahars are unable to access Dalit reservation or other government assistance. There are five engineers among them but no doctors or other professionals. ‘‘A judge or an IAS from among us will take ages,’’ says Fr Manthara.

With women’s literacy at less than one per cent, their children going to school is almost impossible. At the Sheikpura resettlement colony, there is a one-room school too, but students drop out after one or two years. ‘‘We earn Rs 20-25 by rag-picking. Going to school doesn’t earn anything,’’ says Sajjan Kumar.

In the towns, the Musahars pick rags and collect waste from chicken shops for food. In the rural areas, they live off agricultural labour and are semi-nomadic. ‘‘Earning, living for the day is their philosophy,’’ says Fr Manthara.

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Due to the extreme unsanitary conditions they live in, the Musahars are prone to kalajar — which the state government claims to have eradicated — and TB.

As a rule, the Musahars haven’t woken up to the miseries of their existence. Middle-aged Parvatia is smoking away in front of her crammed room and waiting, not for social justice, but for the rains to stop so that she could go for rag picking.

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