GUNTHROAT

“Dantewada yahan se 200 km door hain. Waha bahuth naxal log hothe he sir”. Vijay was in no mood to stop talking when he was driving along the muddy road to Indian Steel Company in Basti Village. My heart was beating faster as we got nearer. My Manager was blissfully unaware of what we were upto. I had got clear warning from the Head Office that 2 bankers who had gone near the company for symbolic possession were beaten up. Others were unwilling to go. I jumped into the bandwagon without knowing all this.


The route from railway station was pristine and unblemished by concrete and cement structures. Paddy fields and small huts adorned both sides of road. I felt I was back at home. As we turned to the mud track leading to the company, Vijay the driver said that the main road goes to Orissa which is just 2 kms away. I was thinking about passages from“The Broken Republic” written by Arundhati Roy. Most of the villagers would lose their habitat and livelihood once their land is acquired for power plants and coal mines. They may be given jobs or compensation for giving up their fields. But that would be just prolonging the misery ahead. There are around 7 power plants around the Champa region. 26 new projects are coming. The ecological impact these factories would make on the region could be devastating. I thought of the comment by a leading fiction writer that India should mine all the minerals from these forests and paddy fields, and then we can all become rich. Most of the middle class Indians subscribe to such simplistic and preposterous ideas. The Midnight’s children had a lot of tall dreams about our country’s progress with Five Year Plans and Gram Swaraj, but Manmohan’s children(the ones born around 90s which includes me) have a completely different world view. The five year plans and poverty alleviation is replaced by demands for more malls and more bandwidth. The development of a region is gauged these days by the range in the mobile phone. I don’t know which side I am in. I look out after my small reverie and see the giant burners and the watch tower of the Steel plant. The road has gone from bad to worse. I tell Vijay to stop at some corner of the building so that we can paste the notice and take a photograph without inviting any attention. The sun had already come out in full glow, but nobody seems to have woken up to guard the route. I was getting a bit uncomfortable with the eerie silence.


My Regional Manager asks Vijay to take the car to the front gate to my shock. I cursed my fate for jumping into this suicide. Vijay slowly passed the watch gate, pulled up just enough with a rope for a small car to cross. When we reached the front gate I could not see any activity happening inside the company. As two guards halted us and asked what we were doing, we moved on unheeded. We had the supreme safety of the window panes of the Tata Indica. As we returned to the chowk, the Regional Manager asked Vijay to stop at some vacant corner of the boundary wall for pasting the possession notice. But people had already got crowded at the Watch gate. We replied that we took a wrong turn when they asked us our whereabouts. As we reached an empty corner, I applied gum to the notice and handed it over to my Manager. He hopped out and run towards the tall brick wall, as he was pasting the notice, I took some snaps of it. Suddenly I heard howling from the side of the watch gate. The workers were running towards us. I started to sweat. All of us got into the car and we started in full speed. After some distance we noticed two bikes following us. They overtook us at a particular point and my heart beat became normal. Suddenly I saw a railway gate which was getting closed before us. I saw the men from the company sitting with the gate man. I knew what was going to happen next.

Around 10 bikes most of them with 3 guys on it followed. They started banging on the window panes. Vijay asked innocently, “Aap kyun nahin bathaye?”Vijay opened the glass and the leader of the gang grabbed his collar. He snatched the papers from me and roared “To Tum Bank se aayo hon Saale....”. I got out of the car and went to the Leader, patiently explained to him in my inadequate Hindi that he can delete the photos that we took and tear off the notice. We don’t want any fight. He was in no mood to relent to my request and asked Vijay to take the car back to the company. I told the leader to take my seat in the car and I myself climbed into the pillion of one of the bikes. I tried to befriend the guy driving the bike. His name was Vikas Yadav and he was doing his Mcom. He told they were not paid by the company since April because plant had shut down because of heavy losses. I told I was doing my job and he should make sure nothing untoward would happen if we oblige them. There are no martyrs in Capitalism. It is futile to be a Hero when you are trying to do your daily job. Vikas assured me nothing would happen.

Once we reached the Watch gate, an old man came in a car. He had a long moustache. He was visibly agitated and asked us where we were from. He shouted that it is not proper to come at night and paste notices like thieves. I said it was morning, but he continued with his monologue. Finally he cooled down and said we were their guests and providers(as we have lent them money), but what we did was wrong. He introduced himself as Mr Jain. He said he was a Mazdoor.I observed him closely. He had the latest Blackberry phone and an expensive watch. He should be a really high paid Mazdoor. He asked us to sit in the chair brought to us. The scene changed suddenly from hostility to an uncomfortable camaraderie. Mr Jain spoke about the recession and subsequent crisis the company faces. He said they did not have captive mines which resulted in heavy losses when the supply was cut down suddenly by traders. I knew this as I had read their files .It was the result of the myopic vision of the company.. He was not telling anything new. I started getting bored with his rant. He said 7 bankers had come 3 days ago with police protection and the workers and their family, around 1000 of them prevented them from taking symbolic possession. We were obviously stupid to go their alone. I told we had been unaware of the ground reality and we were just doing our job.

The digital camera was taken to the Systems division of the company. In the mean time Jeevanand, the leader was throwing obscenities around him and us. He was high on Paan and something else. Another car came in few minutes. A tall guy wearing shorts got out. Vikas told me he was the Tecnical officer. He gave the camera back to us. He asked the workers to frisk us. I gave my phones. The Technical Officer lightened up when he saw the Hadimba Temple from my Manali trip last month. He corrected it as Hidimba temple named after Hidimbi, wife of Bheema. Finally they asked us to do as much as we can to restructure their debt. The regional manager promised that he would try. I also told Vikas and Anand that things would get better. All the photos we took near the company were deleted and the camera was returned.

As we returned I knew we had made empty promises to the hapless workers. Mr Jain and the Technical Officer would return to the greener pastures once the right opportunity came (or are they stuck there because of some stupid ideal? I don’t know). The promoters would go to new banks to borrow more for some new unsustainable venture. The banks would find new crooks to fund. The workers would be left with the concrete structure getting rusted before them. Their fields and home under it. Yes they had become rich, with steel and minerals at their backyards. Mobile towers all around powering their mobile phones 24 hours.

As my colleagues proceeded to the nearby town to see the advocate, I took a 1 hour bus ride to the nearby Industrial area. It was called the power capital of the state. The bus was full of village folks. They had a dusty texture to the skin, probably because of the Koyla mined out at every corner. Paddy fields and Power plants existed side by side on the way to the town. A Hyundai showroom had come up to cater to the needs of Immigrant engineers who ran the power plants. A Pajero and BMW were parked outside the small Dhaba were I ate my lunch. I saw farmers, beggars and factory workers living together in what looked like a fleeting harmony.

The new battle lines of my country would be on these towns. The farmers would continue becoming unskilled labourers and would be fired at the next recession when demand comes down. They will not have savings or land to sustain themselves. The unrest is here to continue in the heart of India. We will all be players in it. The air-conditioned buildings of Bangalore and Delhi would not save us from the ire of these angry youth. I pray to the unknown God to save my country on my way back. Before reaching back to office tomorrow I have to retrieve the photos they deleted from the camera. There are no heroes in capitalism, in the world that is flat, for the sons of Manmohan.