In birthplace, Soren and son are ‘people we don’t see at all’
The exclusively Santhal hamlet of about 105 households is where Shibu Soren and current CM Hemant Soren were born.
Shibu Soren’s brother Lalu in Nemra. (Source: Express photo by Manas Choudhary)
When the National Rural Health Mission’s mobile medical unit, siren blaring, rolls into this hamlet in Ramgarh district’s Gola block, nearly everyone crowds around it. Those not around the vehicle are in lying in the shade, feverish.
The unit, which usually comes on the sixth of each month, was at the village for the second time in three days last week. Its logs indicate 22 people were tested on November 5; 20 were positive for malaria — scarcely believable in a hamlet without a mention of which no tale of Jharkhand is complete.
The exclusively Santhal hamlet of about 105 households is where Shibu Soren and current CM Hemant Soren were born. His father Sobran’s murder on November 27, 1957, near the village by moneylenders turned Shibu, the second of five brothers, into an activist. Shibu was, however, active in Santhal Pargana region.
“This is a Kurmi-majority region. When I contested, I did so twice from Bermo and once from Gomia,” says Lalu Soren, the fourth of Sobran Soren’s five sons.
Lalu, who lost all three contests, is on exile for joining the TMC ahead of the Lok Sabha elections. “I regret it and I have since left, but they won’t talk to me. They were looking for ways to throw me out,” he says while giving this correspondent a tour of the family’s home, the largest in Nemra.
Lalu has turned a fierce critic of the JMM. Except for the election symbol of the party welded to the gates, the house has no markings of being associated with the JMM. “In the village, the people have begun supporting AJSU party,” says Lalu. Chandra Prakash Choudhary, an AJSU leader and a Kurmi, is Ramgarh MLA; villagers attribute the few developmental efforts to him. “Should we support the man who is available at all times or people we don’t see at all?” says Kailash Kisko.
“Hemant came and opened a [health] subcentre here, but gave no beds. There is a proposal for a 30-bed hospital nearby, but his government could not get it done,” said Lalu Soren.
Villagers say Hemant visited the village once once after becoming CM: on the martyrdom day of his grandfather last year. He promised a residential school for adivasi children, a stadium and a memorial for his grandfather at the site of his death. Lalu claims not even tenders have been issued since.
Despite the malaria outbreak, the health subcentre Hemant inaugurated was locked the day this newspaper visited Nemra. “The doctor comes rarely. It has been closed for about six days now. It would not matter if it were open. They have medicines only for small cuts,” said villager Kisko. When contacted, district civil surgeon P K Pandey blamed the district malaria officer. “The DMO did not go to the village even once. I have scolded him.”
The anganwadi in the hamlet was not functioning either. Babita Devi, the sevika, said her son had been diagnosed with typhoid. “About 10 or 12 children attend it. We have not had any food to serve since August, so parents aren’t keen to send their children,” she said.
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