The mourning after

Two hours away from Gaya, Shabdo was once just another sleepy hamlet in Bihar. For years Shabdo found no place on the development map of India. Then in walked Mahesh and Sarita in 1999. Shabdo soon became an aberration, visited regularly by UN agencies and trainees from the state administrative service for its unique developmental model.

Sarita and Mahesh were doing in one village what the government was supposed to do in the entire district. In three years, the chasm between Shabdo and its neighbouring villages became so wide that it lead to a sequence of events ending in the killings.

The Shabdo development model was the brainchild of Magadh Commissioner G.C. Sirohi. To take his book on 8216;8216;community living8217;8217; literally to the community, he pumped in government funds and machinery. Then he found two committed activists who gave shape to his vision.

When Sarita and Mahesh first came to work here, they found there was no water because the traditional water system of 8216;ahaar paine8217; lay silted and disused.

Their first success came when 40 villages motivated their residents to contribute in reviving the ahaar paine system. After this was done, Sirohi and the duo chose Shabdo as a test village for community development.

In three years, they got Rs 26 lakh sanctioned from government schemes. And the village has a lot to show for this. A red clay road was built by the villagers under the SGRY scheme. The village begins from a neat square flanked by the Pradhan8217;s house. On the one side is the restored ahaar pond that has paines channels leading into the villages and also feeding the ahaar. It8217;s networked with similar structures in 40 villages and originates from the Hadhadwa dam up north. In one corner of the village, is the community centre and the jag janini bhawan. The mustard and wheat fields lie in a one contiguous stretch as the villagers decided to break the medhs boundaries of the field. The first time, the yield went up by 25 per cent.

Just before the murder, on the anvil were a community cattle rearing scheme that would mean that the village would collectively own the cattle. The villagers had earlier successfully experimented with horticulture and aquaculture.

But Shabdo soon became an object of envy. Villages like Rajabigha8212;from where Sarita and Mahesh8217;s killers are suspected to have come from8212;lagged far behind.

Gradually, everybody started eyeing Shabdo, especially the local politicians. 8216;8216;I like these schemes but this village has got a lot of money from the government,8217;8217; says S. Paswan, the local MLA, who for the first time was forced to give Rs 50,000 from his MLA funds.

The whisper campaign grew louder. Local panchayat heads started talking about funds being diverted to Shabdo. On the other hand, residents in other villages suddenly saw that development was possible and starting questioning their mukhias.

Now all this development in Shabdo looks endangered. 8216;8216;We can8217;t talk to government officials and get work done the way they Mahesh and Sarita could,8217;8217; said Manki Devi, a villager.

As the villagers mourn, the unspoken question that is on everybody8217;s mind is: will the death of the activists mean the death of a dream?