Only 18 kilometers from Arwal, the district headquarters of the newly-formed district sharing the same name, is the Telpa village. On 28 May, Lalan Paswan, a Dalit, was allegedly killed by the police on the charge that he was a bicycle thief. The villagers did not believe the version of the police and organised a protest rally. The police reacted by firing several rounds, killing five villagers and injuring many more. The police later claimed that the crowd had become threatening and uncontrollable. The size of the bare-handed protesting crowd could not have been more than a couple of hundred and even if they were indeed uncontrollable, the police need not have killed and injured those many villagers to scare the rest of them away. The incidence is so typical in Arwal and nearby districts of Patna, Bhojpur, Jehanabad, Aurangabad and Gaya (the Maoist region of south Bihar) that the incident received a bare one-day coverage in the local media. Neither the district administration nor the political authorities felt it necessary to issue a statement about the role of police in this ghastly atrocity. According to a document prepared by ADRI, a social science research institute in Patna, there were at least 56 cases of serious agrarian violence during 1971-90; it increased manifold thereafter with 57 massacres during 1991-95; and more than 100 massacres from 1996 to date.

The History of Agrarian Struggle in South Bihar

Interestingly, south Bihar, which has been in the throes of militant agrarian struggle for the last three decades, is not a backward region. Enjoying the advantage of being a part of the Gangetic valley and the assured irrigation through the more than a century-old Sone canal system, the agricultural and rural economy of the region is much better than the rest of the state. It is the seat of whatever Green Revolution that Bihar has experienced. But the tenor of agrarian relations here is essentially set by the Zamindari system of the colonial period, now legally abolished, but in reality still operational. The economic activities and employment opportunities are first characterised by an extremely inegalitarian land distribution, leaving more than half of the rural households landless wage earners. About one-third of the rural population is schedule castes and nearly all of them are agricultural labourers. In similar agrarian situations elsewhere in Bihar or even in India, one would have expected the hold of the landlords to be so strong that any protest or movement by the poor is extremely unlikely. But the south Bihar region has escaped that stifling tranquility for several historical reasons — a vibrant movement of small/medium peasants from the 1930s till the legal abolition of Zamindari in the 1950s; secondly, a movement for ‘social equality’ by the members of middle caste Hindus, again starting in the 1930s; and finally, the exposure of the rural people to the world outside through massive migration, either to the industrial units in Kolkata or the military or other regions/occupations, facilitated by easy connectivity of the region through rail. Thus the culture of protest and movement in the region is more than 70 years old, the later half of this long period witnessing militant protests and struggles. Among all the agrarian struggles in India, the one in south Bihar has probably been the most resilient, spanning more than three decades and thus testifying its ideological and organizational strength.

If one adds to more than half of the rural households that are landless, those households whose land endowment is very marginal and hence much dependent on agricultural labour for bare subsistence, it would constitute about two-thirds of the rural households. For them, employment opportunities and prevailing wage rates are even more important than joining the agrarian struggle. Fortunately, since the land is very fertile and irrigation facilities are adequate, the landlords would rarely keep any of their land uncultivated and thus employment opportunities may not shrink. But when it comes to wage rates of workers in the region, in real terms, it was not much different from what it was about half-a-century ago until the late 1970s. Since the beginning of the 1980s, largely because of the sustained agrarian struggle, the real wage rate has shown some upward movement. But even now, the prevailing daily wage rate of about Rs 35 (with some increase during the peak season) is much below the prescribed minimum wage under the Minimum Wages Act. But what makes south Bihar’s villages the ‘flaming fields of Bihar’ is not merely the wage issue, but the nature of employment relations between the landlords and labourers. There are also the issues of social status, sexual exploitation, security of life and political rights of the workers. It was not much long ago in central Bihar that wearing a clean dhoti by labourers, sitting in a cot in the presence of their masters or walking erect were taboos and rape of their womenfolk were regular and normal. Although at the cost of peace, the prolonged agrarian struggle for three decades has caused some improvement in that social scenario. It is, therefore, most common among the labourers in south Bihar to describe their struggle as ‘izzat ki ladai’ (the fight for self-respect), fully aware that a mere wage struggle has only limited relevance for them. Overall, the labour and employment relations in rural south Bihar could possibly be described as one where employment opportunities may not be low, but the wage rates are indeed so, in spite of a highly productive agricultural economy. But what makes the situation terrible is the deep conflict, quite often manifesting itself in ghastly massacres, the victims mostly belonging to the backward and scheduled castes. The compulsion of agriculture being the only source of livelihood for both the landlords and agricultural labourers keeps them together in the village, but it is a life on the edge, particularly for the workers. The emergence of backward caste leaders in Bihar’s politics has made some difference to the caste dimensions of the struggle, but they are not invariably favourable to the poor.

The Silent Sufferers

A typical agrarian struggle, unlike the trade union movement of the urban industrial workers, is a much pervading phenomenon — in some way or other, it touches the community life in the villages, the day-to-day lives of even the women and children in the family and the functioning of the village-level administration. But it is indeed the women on whom the pressure of conflict and tension is extremely heavy. Quite often, the male members of the family will be away from home either for work in a distant village or undertaking organizational responsibilities of the party and sometimes even to avoid attack at the night by the landlords. Such absence will be longer for those families whose male members have migrated for employment. This, obviously makes the responsibilities of the women at home much larger and demanding. The worst happens when a man dies in the struggle, leaving behind his widow and orphaned children. Since the killings are on both the sides – landlords’ and the labourers’ - some of these widows are also from landlords’ families and their sufferings are no less. Indeed, the number of such widows is so large in south Bihar that the adult literacy programme in Bhojpur had to address this specifically — women literacy groups in conflict-ridden villages had to provide some support services to the local widows, be they from families of landlords or labourers.

A Biased Police

One of the worst dimensions of the militant agrarian struggle in south Bihar is the highly partisan role of the police administration. Not that elsewhere in India they have shown the sensitivity and responsiveness to the struggles of the poor; temperamentally they are invariably pro-rich. But in south Bihar, they have often not only allowed the rich landlords to perpetuate a reign of terror by the different senas they have formed (Ranveer Sena or Lorik Sena), they have often indulged in unprovoked direct killings to terrorise the struggling labourers. There have been instances when killings by landlords have taken place just 50 metres away from a police post, created specially to prevent such violence.

Years of militant struggle has probably helped the poor agricultural labourers in south Bihar to achieve a political identity and some changes in their sub-human social existence, but they had to pay for it through their blood. Why the primary needs of the rural poor can not be met in the normal course of administration or political developments in the world’s largest democracy is the burning question.