A few hours drive away is the Lal Kothi of the Rai family of Bilaspur estate. Chandra Mohan Rai is a three-term BJP MLA. Adjoining the Lal Kothi is the Peeli Kothi, where another branch of the family is now settled. Peeli Kothi's Vishwa Mohan Sharma, a Congress mla, was industry minister in Laloo's government. Clearly, this is a family with political clout. Yet their problems have been mounting. First, as Chandra Mohan Rai elaborates, the younger generation is no longer interested in the ancestral lands. "My son is a solicitor in Delhi. He panics when you mention caste to him. My daughter is an mba in Mumbai. Her husband works in Reliance Infocomm. They don't want to fight the battles to keep the land."
And the legal battles have to be fought. Rai too complains about the former collector. "Between 2001 to 2003, several false cases were filed against me. Over 178 acres of family land was wrongly distributed. I was wrongly accused of not giving the minimum wages and even charged for atrocities against Dalits." Agriculture, he says, is no longer as productive. "The labour makes unreasonable demands. Then they go off to work in other states. They think it is a picnic. They return with a transistor in one hand and a suitcase in another."
Behind the Lal Kothi is a railway line. Everyday the Jannayak Express from Darbhanga to Amritsar passes, packed with Bihari labour, on the roof, the seats, the floor. Thousands leave everyday in search of the better wages other states offer. But most still stay. And in the end they do work on the estates for pathetic wages.
In Champaran, no one pays the minimum wage. The Vermas say they give five kilos of rough paddy for a day's work. Villagers say they actually get two and a half kilos. Rai says the wages have gone up to Rs 35. But district officials say people rarely get paid more than Rs 20.
The "nightmare collector", Ravi Parmar, is now on deputation to the Centre. Parmar says that when he arrived in Champaran, the minimum wage was Rs 62, yet even contractors working on government schemes were paying Rs 20. The zamindars usually paid in kind. Women would hold out their pallus and a few kilos of rough paddy would be given by the estate munshis. Parmar says he distributed 7,000 acres of land among the landless. "But I am not hopeful. In some instances, the landless gave the parchas back to the zamindars. In other cases, they have used the courts to fight back. These are people with no respect for the law. From the revenue official to the high courts, they have connections everywhere. I could only make a difference while I was there."
Under the ceiling laws, land is divided into six categories depending on its fertility. An individual can only own up to 15 acres of the most fertile and 30 acres of the least fertile. Clearly, all the old landed families violate the law, owning hundreds if not thousands of acres of lands. Indeed, Laloo Yadav's biggest failure and the reason for Bihar's anarchy is the failure to implement the land laws. Yet, as Parmar says, "Laloo never succumbed to pressure to remove me. Yet the political will to push through genuine reform is lacking." In a nutshell, the old system is breaking down, but new institutions have not been created.
In the Jehanabad-Bhojpur belt of central Bihar, the Naxalite movement led to a fight for better wages, often culminating in horrific caste massacres by the private landlord armies. The CPI(ML) and the Maoists are now extending their area of influence to north Bihar.Says former Bihar dgp, D.P. Ojha: "The Naxalites fight for the poorest of the poor. Laloo lets them fight the wage battle. He speaks against feudal forces but does not tackle the problem head on." All the landlords complain about the Naxalites. Says Shahi: "In the daytime, they are the CPI(ML) who negotiate for better wages. At night, they don uniforms and become Maoists who shoot at us."
Laloo Yadav is the lesser enemy who is criticised for the "criminalisation". True, it is Yadav gangs and Muslim extortionists who terrorise Champaran. But many of them were the lathaith (musclemen) of the landlords who have now branched off on their own in 'egalitarian' Bihar. It is the democratisation of muscle that has led to the rampaging crime figures in West Champaran.
Besides, as Parmar says, in West Champaran there are an average of 200 kidnappings every year. But the landlords, guarded by their musclemen, appear to enjoy a certain immunity. "In the three years that I was there, not a single landlord was kidnapped," says Parmar. What's perhaps even more revealing is that no mainstream political party ever came with a complaint about violation of the land ceiling or bonded labour laws.
In this rural chaos, the poor prey on the poor, some leave, some stay to toil for a few grains of rice. An old woman eats only boiled rice every day. She last tasted dal on the day of the chhat puja. Vegetables are a luxury. She and her descendants, malnourished, bend every day on the zamindar's fields. This is land which should have been hers if the law had any effect on the ground. Meanwhile, the rich travel down a bumpy road to make another court appearance.
The only idealism left in Champaran is inscribed on Ashoka's lonely pillar by an abandoned field in Lauriya village. It is written in a script no one can read.
