In Lalpur, it is winter of discontent by Paromita Ukil Lalpur is not unique. There are hundreds of Lalpurs scattered all over India. The details may vary, but the broad facts are the same: a tiny village where only Dalits live, the poorest of the poor. It lies squeezed between sugarcane fields and mango orchards, owned by upper-caste Brahmins and Thakurs. Through the centre runs the main road leading to a neighbouring village. On either side of this road are the 60-odd mud houses that constitute Lalpur. The houses are small and the courtyards big in comparison because that is where the cows, bullocks and calves live under a loose thatch structure. Their huge earthenware eating bowls (naand) occupy a major part, dotting the courtyard. Women and young girls of the family have a tough time filling these naands. They spend a large part of the day peeling off grass from the fields to be mixed with paddy or wheat husk, depending on the time of the year. Since there has been no paddy harvest this year (owing to zero rains) in October, fodder is also in short supply this winter. Not only that, the poor monsoon has left behind a sparse grass cover on the little uncultivated land that is available. So life is that much harder for the women and girls, usually responsible for procuring food for the cattle. They are also responsible for procuring fuel for the family. This they manage by gathering sticks and twigs from under the neem, fig, peepal, mango and other big trees in and around the orchards near the village. Since that is hardly enough they depend largely on the dung of their cattle. The women and girls begin their day by clearing their courtyard of the dung; later they carry a basketful on their head to a clearing on one edge of the village and under the shade of the mango trees they get down to action sitting on their haunches. In swift deft pats they convert a blob of the cow-dung into shapes resembling oversized lamb chops. They leave them standing erect to dry in the sun. Once they have dried completely they become kanda or dung-cakes, the prime fuel in Lalpur. The kanda patch also serves as ladies’ club of the village; it was here that six of us made plans to do something about self-reliance. Sandeep had suggested spinning yarn on the charkha. The women seemed to have no problem agreeing to go for a 15-day training programme to Shajahanpur district of UP in mid-January. Two of the women were Tularamji’s daughters-in-law –Vyjanthimala and Sudama. Tularamji is among the two well-off members of the village. A handsome man of 52 years, he can be seen strolling around the village in his white dhoti and red polo-neck sweater, a grandson in arm. He is one of the few men of the village who can tell you the exact year of his birth and also the year he completed primary school. The following year he got married, he said. But that education has left its impact on him, making him liberal enough to unhesitatingly allow his daughters-in-law to cross the Lakshman Rekha and go outstation for training. Poverty has also got something to do with it. Despite his relative affluence, he feels the pinch of this year’s scant rainfall. That is why he is keen the Ashram does something to involve the women in some kind of income generation programme. Will there be enough to eat next year? Despite the extreme poverty in Lalpur the men greet you with warm amiable smiles that touch your heart. The demeanour is so pure in intent; he has no schemes or plots to profit from your company. He is part of that scheme of things where his destiny is the half-acre or so of land his forefathers left him. If monsoon is good it provides enough to eat for the whole family all the year round. But what do you do in a year like this one? The entire seed sapling crop got burnt out due to lack of water; there was no question of any paddy harvest. The rainy season ended in September, this year it left behind a land that was stone dry. The 3-ft wide Rajwaha canal that runs along the northern edge of Lalpur was also dry till December 17. The UP government’s irrigation department at all relented to release water in the canal because of the Ashram’s intervention: a letter bearing signatures of almost all the villagers was sent to the district magistrate. Similar letters with signatures of most villagers were gathered from two other villages that benefit from the canal. Needless to say, the Magsaysay made the administration take the letter seriously. The water came. But it came too late. It was at the fag end of the sowing season for wheat. By then most villagers had already borrowed money from the mahajan (moneylender) to sink deeper into a debt trap. What else can you do? “Bowab na to khaib ka?” (If I don’t sow what will I eat?) The truth is, if you don’t grow food you don’t eat the coming year. So you borrow money at Rs 5 or Rs 10 for per Rs 100 per month, depending on what your terms are with the moneylender. You irrigate the parched land with diesel engine sets that draw water from borewells around 100 ft deep. It cost Chhabinath Rs 400 to irrigate four bighas (in local measure units) at Rs 50 per hour. In one hour you can irrigate two bighas by the engine set. That apart, he bought seeds worth Rs 440, chemical fertilisers worth Rs 450 and incurred a loan of Rs 900. The land is not his, he has taken it on batai (sharecropping). This means he will have to give away half the yield. How long will the rest last? Will it feed his family till the next crop? “I cannot think of what will happen later. I cannot think beyond the next two-three months, Bhaiyya,” Chhabinath told Sandeep at an evening meet of villagers at the Ashram. Asha volunteers and villagers met on December 18 to jointly decide on the relief measures for the three Lalpur families on the verge of starvation. How much to give and to whom. There was quite a furore over the latter question. “Deyo to sab ka deyo nahin to kisi ka na deyo” (If you have to give, give everybody.) When it was pointed out that was not possible because funds were limited the villagers grudgingly settled for five families that needed immediate help. These families needed help because there was no able-bodied adult male to beg, borrow and somehow grow some wheat that will last only some of the time. Seen from that perspective, the entire village was in acute distress. Hence the murmuring discontent and heated discussions that echoed for days all through Lalpur after the meeting at the Ashram. As Chhabinath later suggested in a one on one discussion to gauge the mood in Lalpur, “Why don’t you give even a small token amount to all the families. Then the rest of us won’t feel cut off from the Ashram.” He said even a meagre 10 kg of wheat per family would be of at least some help at this time of crisis. The other families are being given two to three quintals depending on the size of the family. The cost of distributing 10 kg of wheat to every Lalpur family will come to Rs 3600/-. There always is hope after despair Five teenage girls achieved what the men of Lalpur could not. Unlike their fathers, they easily attained consensus when it came to deciding on which clothes to give to which family, keeping in mind the entire village was covered. These were old clothes which Asha volunteers had collected in Lucknow. There were sweaters, jeans and tee shirts, trousers and shirts and saris. There were not too many clothes for children and infants though. The girls first listed (with some help from volunteer Guddubhaiyya) all the families in the village and then sorted out the clothes. The entire procedure lasted three hours. The girls were almost restless by the end because they were getting late for chara-pani, the evening feed for the cattle. They did not have class that day. Rather, they did not have their normal class that afternoon, because what they learnt in decision-making was perhaps as important as the three R’s they learn in the afternoons. That is the only time they get, between procuring grass for, and feeding the cattle later. This class is held in Kadhileyji’s courtyard. Bindeshwari, around 15 years, is his daughter and a student in this class of five girls. Two of the girls, Sabitri and Radha, are even preparing to take up the Primary School examinations later in the academic year. Though this afternoon class for girls is only about three weeks old, it is already creating an impact in the village. There is eagerness towards learning. As I walk back to the Ashram from this class I get stopped almost every afternoon: “Will you teach us, didiji?” Sometimes it is a group of men in their twenties or thirties, heading home with their bullocks and plough after a long day on the fields. Sometimes it is a group of women taking a short breather with their babies in their arm. “Will you teach us to write our names, didiji?” Being anguthachhap (thumb-impression) is a stigma even though most married women in Lalpur do not know how to hold the pen. Will you teach us to write our names, didiji…? It is a plea to help them cross the barrier of shame.