Tags:
Journalism of Courage
Prabhu Prasad Singh is getting ready to start his day at his one-room shared accommodation at the government quarters at Gardanibagh in Patna. After wearing his dhoti and kurta,he picks up his bag that has some papers and the signature instrument of his professiona guntry zareeb iron scale that identifies him as an amin,the one who measures land.
Prabhu joined the Bihar Bhoodan Yagna Committee BBYC,an autonomous body which surveys and distributes Bhoodan redistributed land to the landless,in 1978 at a salary of
Rs 200. He now earns Rs 5,500 a month,but does not get his salarly regularly. He is the sole bread-winner of a family of nine and visits home only in the months that he gets his salary.
Posted at the state headquarters since September last year,Prabhus job is to visit villages to survey Bhoodan land,match old records of the BBYC and submit a report to his senior,who cross-checks it and prepares a list of available land in a district that the state can distribute among the landless families. But it is easier said than done,with more than 60 per cent Bhoodan land under the illegal possession of influential people in villages.
Prabhus task for the day is to survey land at Charra Mauja in Naubatpur,barely 25 km from Patna. He first visits the committee office at Gardanibagh to collect some more papers. His workplace has old,rickety wooden furniture and a Remington typewriter. He cannot hide his smile while being photographed. Is an amins life worth writing about? he wonders.
Today,he will travel to the fields in a car. Usually,he travels in a crowded auto-rickshaw. He gets no travel allowance. He calls up another amin,Gajanan Dhobi,who knows Charra Mauja village well and will accompany him. People get suspicious at the sight of an amin,especially upper-caste people who illegally possess lots of Bhoodan land. It is very important to get a local man like Gajanan to avoid a conflict, he says.
We reach Charra Mauja after driving on semi-metalled roads for about half an hour. Prabhu and Gajanan look for ward member Dilip Kumar who is supposed to have the agricultural map of the village. The committee does not have a map for every place,so it has to depend on local residents to cooperate. Dilip Kumar says he had one but sent it to Patna to get it laminated.
They ask a few other villagers for a map. All of them want to know why the committee is measuring land after so many years. Prabhu gives them curt answers and moves on.
After an hour of running from one place to another and cajoling and convincing,a photocopy of the village map is arranged. Now Prabhu has to search for khata number 122 and khasra number 275,which has 31 decimals of Bhoodan land,donated to the Bhoodan movement in the early 1950s by Charra villagers,Babu Janki Nandan Prasad Singh and Thakur Prasad Singh.
After their initial hesitation,villagers reveal that one Baldev Ram has been illegally occupying the land for years. Once the land is surveyed and matched in our records,we send a notice to the illegal occupant to vacate the land. We also inform the police to avoid any law-and-order problem, says Prabhu. It is easy to get the land vacated from lower-caste people but very difficult if upper-caste people are involved.
While still surveying the Bhoodan plot,Prabhu,who has worked in more than 10 Bihar districts,recalls what an upper-caste man holding Bhoodan land told him at Siwan once: When we are born,our parents keep a big bundle of currency notes wrapped in a red cloth so that we are able to fight land-related cases.
More than 1.5 lakh acresabout 60 per cent of Bhoodan landis under illegal possession in the state.
Prabhu has made a thorough search by now. A place near a dry village canal is the point from where land should be measured to reach the Bhoodan plot in question. Prabhu takes out his 50-feet iron chain. He holds its one end while Gajanan holds the other. After some rigorous measurement for about half a km,Prabhu finds the Bhoodan plot. The field shows signs of a recent harvest. The iron chain is sacrosanct for villagers even in times when plastic scale is used. Unless they see the guntry zareeb,the villagers are not satisfied with the measurement, says Prabhu,bending down to scale further. He takes note of the land around the Bhoodan plot,mentions its type as two-crop and enters the name of the villager who illegally possesses it.
Prabhu is through with the days work. As villagers offer him water,he assures them that hed ask the panchayat to hold a meeting soon to prepare a list of the landless villagers. Ward member Dilip Kumar nods but he knows it will take a lot of time to get Bhoodan land vacated.
Back in the car,Prabhu looks exhausted. He talks of how none of his four sons wants to be an amin. They say I have measured others land all my life but have not bought even a small chunk of land with my salary. They are right but I have nothing else to do. I have three more years to go, he says. His boss,BBYC chairman Kumar Subhamoorty,says they have an annual budget of Rs 2 crore but get only Rs 70 lakh. It is true several of my staffers,including amin Prabhu,do not get salary for three-four months in a year. He wants the state government to take note of it.
