Poor Orissa Girls !

The Great Indian Bride Bazaar

Are you not getting married due to over age, unemployment, shortage of girls in your community, bad reputation or poor financial condition, welcome to the Great Indian Bride Bazaar of Orissa where girls of all kind are available on a price.

Spread over a dozen districts of Orissa this ‘market of girls’ operate through network of agents expert in persuading impoverished and innocent parents, who have many daughters to marry off. These agents work in cahoots with local leaders, lodge owners, temple priests and police who facilitate quick marriage of the girls to grooms of a distant land speaking different language.

Amit Jain, 37, a grain merchant of Jhansi, is one such person who could not get married despite his family efforts for last 12 years as the population of girls has gone down drastically in the region. Desperate Amit then headed for Orissa to hunt for a bride copying other young men like him who could not find a match in their own area.

Supported by an agent Jain visited the house of three girls in Orissa out of which all agreed to marry their daughters to him but he chose the good looking girl of a Brahmin family of village Kuranga. The farmer family has five daughters and a son all educated up to 12^th class but did not had money to marry off daughters. The family agreed and decided to give their daughter after verifying the credentials of Jain back in Jhansi.

Over the last one decade Orissa has become a centre for men from central India buying girls for marriage from impoverished families. Every year thousands of Oriya girls are traded as brides by unscrupulous agents to desperate young men. These girls are sold for Rs 20,000 to Rs 40,000 from Sambalpur, Bargarh, Kalahandi, Bolangir, Sundergarh, Jajpur, Koraput, Rayagada, Nuapada and Mayurbhanj districts.

These districts of Orissa are known for sex ratio above national average. In some it even crosses 1000 women per thousand men while the areas where the girls are being sold are infamous for female feticide and infanticide.

Taking advantage of this situation several crooked and deceitful agents on both sides have come up who lure gullible parents to marry-off their girls to males coming for bride hunting here. ‘’These agents paint a very rosy picture of the distant land where the brides would be sent and give examples of families who had sent their daughters’, says Lingaraj a former JNU scholar and a hardcore socialist working in the region on farmer issues.

‘’It all started in early nineties when some Oriya girls who had gone out on seasonal migration came back married. They were bedecked with jewellery and prosperity writ large on their faces. These girls then become role model for others who too married their daughters through the husbands of these girls out of which some acted as touts’’, says Priyaranjan Sahu of Sambalpur.

A former sarpanch of Bargarh Jagdish Panda had five daughters out of which three are married in Bundelkhand. He says, ‘’marrying daughters in Orissa has become a big problem as good grooms are rare and very fussy.’’

Panda even got many of the girls of his relatives married to men in districts of Madhya Pradesh and started running a marriage bureau sort of thing. Every year several men come to him asking for brides while families of girls keep in touch with him to find suitable match for their daughters.

Panda being a politician has social service in his mind and a need to enlarge circle of contacts but not all match-makers cum agents (these agents prefer to call theselves match makers) are good like Panda. Raghunath of Lupur Singa village of Attabirra block of Sambalpur arranged over 3400 marriages through agents in Bundelkhand but had to face tough time later when some of the girls were discovered to have been sold further from their groom’s place. Raghunath was once badly beaten by the people of Bargarh town when he was finalizing one such deal.

While Oriya girls are settling in Hindi heartland Rajesh Tripathi a resident of Tikamgarh district chose to stay in Jayant village in Sambalpur at the house of his in-laws. Tripathi now has become a permanent address for bride-huting groups coming from Bundelkhand.

Similarly there are other agents like Ghina Panda and Mahesh of Bolangir district who regularly supply brides to this huge market from the hinterland of Orissa.

Ranjan Panda, a social activist and head of Manav Adhikar Seva Sangh (MASS) says ‘’migration is common to this area and imbalanced development of the state has further added to the problem. The problem is more evident in poverty pockets of the state as a study pointed that 80 per cent of the target families are landless and 70 per cent of those trafficked are illiterate.’’

Ranjan says ‘’time of hardship is the best season for agents to hunt for bride which is during summer’’.

Shibshankar Nanda of Oriya daily ‘’Dharitri’’ says ‘’there was no tradition of dowry in western Orissa but in the last three decades it has become prevalent forcing poor parents to look for cheaper options like marrying off in distant land.’’

He says ‘’the worst hit by this are the agrarian Brahmins and educated families of other castes who have ruined their farming as they do not get labour for agriculture – due to NREGA and migration – and they themselves can not go and work in fields due to social taboo.’’

To understand the well-knit system of bride-hunting this correspondent accompanied a bride-seeker from Bundelkhand to Bargarh in Orissa in Utkal Express to alight at Jharsuguda railway junction. The agents and the aspiring groom normally travel in general class to evade the prying eyes of police and railway officials who often detain them for questioning and extortion.

The agents exploit Rs 20,000 to Rs 40,000 from the bride-seeker depending upon the bargain. Part money is taken as advance while the remaining is paid at the point of getting bride.

Of this money 40-50 percent is retained by the groom agent while remaining is distributed among the local bride identifier who is usually the relative or neighbor of the bride and the local agent.

Most of the local agents are village leaders or educated unemployed youth or hotel managers or a grocery merchants who fixes the deal with counterpart agents accompanying the groom. The local agent plays an important role in motivating the girl parents and mobilizing local support to get the victim married to the groom in some temple or before a local notary with help of a lawyer.

Lingaraj remembers that every year hundreds of marriages are solemnized in Narsingnath temple under Gandhmardan Hill. He however says that these marriages are not reported or noticed.

Sometimes Rs five to ten thousand are passed off to bride’s family as marriage expenses. However it happens in the cases when bride’s family is extremely poor.

During Orissa tour for bride-hunting a agent carries along numerous grooms and puts them in a dingy lodge to take them one by one to the house of prospective bride so that they can select girl of their choice. The counterpart agent from Orissa keep a list of prospective brides and inform them in advance of arriving party.

Narayan Prasad Sahu owner of New Jyoti Lodge says ‘’police keep a regular vigil on the occupants as most of them are those looking for girls. There have been many cases when agents got two sides of different castes married creating problems later and police cases’’.

Sahu says ‘’people here in Orissa have no option but to marry off their girls due to poverty but now they have become very cautious and find out by visiting the grooms place if all is well’’.

However agents are rarely concerned about the future of the girl or the married life of the couple. They have devised new theories of caste wherein a Jain is treated like a Brahmin while people of backward castes have become ‘banias’ (a trading community). Once the family of the girl okays the boy after seeing him physically the agents are in a hurry to fix the deal to get money.

Agent Tulsi Kumar says ‘’once the marriage is done all of them (couple) adjust to the new life and no body complains after a time’. Tulsi is credited to have arranged over thousand deals and now he plans to start a marriage bureau purely based on Oriya girls.

Tikalal Mishra, a social activist of Parmanpur village of Bargarh says ‘’girls getting married to Hindi region are not happy, many come back with the tales of exploitation and tough life especially if they are married to Chambal region or in some remote village’’.

Those in towns are happy but those living in villages are almost in hell like situation. He tells how his niece was cheated by a Brahmin family by saying that they have huge tracts of land and a house in town but turned out to be paupers.

Mishra says ‘’most of the agents are cheats who take away girls by lying about boys family and then run away’. In village Devahal once such agent and his cronies were beaten by the villagers when they tried to marry a minor girl with an aged groom.

Videshi Mahapatra of Porwadi village in Sambalpur district of Orissa married his daughter Aruna in Bundelkhand of Madhya Pradesh on recommendation of a middleman that his girl would be going to the house of an affluent farmer. Later Aruna discovered that the ‘affluent farmer’ is a petty farm labour without single acre of land. When Aruna raised her voice her husband’s family already living on the verge of penury started abusing her.

Disillusioned Aruna,26, returned to Orissa and filed a complaint with Women Police station in Sambalpur only to realize that she is not alone there are thousands of other women like her who were duped by touts and forced into a marriage of ‘inconvenience’.

But Rasespuri,28, of Bagarh in Orissa who was married to Ajjudi Rajput of Ranital village in Chattarpur (MP) does not want to go back even after the death of her husband due to kidney failure. She has a nine month daughter to look after with nobody in the family except her mother-in-law Chotti Bai.

Not all girls are in troubled water. Asarfi of Kharmanda village of Orissa was married to Kriparam Lodhi of Chattarpur (MP) in 2003 after five years she brought her younger sister Gulabi to be married to brother of her husband. Now the two sisters live happily in the joint family.

The sisters have learnt Bundeli language and observe purdah (veil) tradition of the region. Father in law Santram says ‘’the two Oriya girls are like the local girls they have picked up all our traditions and have become like us’’.

‘’We try to keep these girls like any other dauhter-in-law, since we are already facing shortage of girls in our community and those available do not want to live in our remote villages, we know the importance of being women’’, says Kesri Prasad Richariya, Brahmin farmer who got his brother married in Orissa.

‘’In Bundelkhand region since Brahmins are poor and illiterate living in remote villages with no facilities people rarely marry their daughters to such men hence they have no other option but to get brides from Orissa’, says BJP district president of Chattarpur Pushpendra Nath Pathak.

Mahesh Shukla, a Brahmin, married Kamlini Pani of Dungipali village of Bolangir (Orissa). After five years of her marriage Kamlini is now a ‘Aganwadi Worker’ under women and child welfare department. Another Oriya girl is running a grocery shop in village.

Not only Brahmins, scheduled caste men are also getting brides. Baijanti of Hilliplai of Orissa is married to Ganesh of village Andhiyara in Bundelkhand.

All those who do not get marry collect money and go to Orissa. ‘’Instead of spending money on ceremonies here they give that money to agent who arranges a girl for the man’’, says Virendra Diwedi, a youth Congress leader.

This is a very lucrative deal for the people here who bring woman from Orissa, says Diwedi, a resident of Panna where hundreds of Oriya girls have been married in last few years.

He says ‘’they don’t bring girls here to make them sit in air-conditioned houses instead they treat her as an additional hand in farming thus getting a labor who also satisfies his sex needs’.

If the woman does not adjust to the new environment and resists the hard life there are reports that she was sold to another man. However such cases in Bundelkhand are rarely heard.

Janaki Pateria is one such agent in Chatarpur district who got married over 500 boys and girls. After hearing that thousands of male are getting married to girls of Orissa the Rural Development Minister of Madhya Pradesh Gopal Bhargava told one of such agent in Sagar that he would soon organize an exclusive mass marriage ceremony for the boys marrying in Orissa so that thay can be covered under Mukkhyamantri Kanyadan Yojana wherein couples get around Rs 10,000 as government grant.

Pushpendra Nath Pathak says ‘’since this has become a trend and practice in Bundelkhand this should be institutionalized so that ills could be eradicated from the system’’. Pathak now plans to organize some sort of confederation of the Oriya brides in Bundelkhand so that they can meet each other and share their views.

But this is the bride read bright side of the story, a study done in 2003 by Institute of Social and Economic Development, Bhubaneshwar, points that buyers are not alone from Hindi belt it could also be a chilli farmer or brick kiln owner in Andhra Pradesh, or a brothel owner in the metropolises of Mumbai, Delhi or Calcutta.

Many girls after some years of the marriage if do not adjust to the new family do not return to their parents in Orissa out of social fear but just wander ultimately falling in the trap of sex trade.

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Deepak Tiwari/ Orissa and Bundelkhand

(Some names have been changed to hide the identity of the persons.)

A day in south Bastar (Dantewada)

Life in south Bastar village

For rest of India this little known tribal region full of dense jungles spread in an area of 40,000 sq kilometer, is known as Bastar division -- governed by a commissioner with four district collectors to assist him – but for locals this is Dandkaranya zone where Naxals govern through their jaatana sarkar or people’s government.

Leave district headquarters and roadside towns, where situation might look to be normal except for the presence of gun-totting security personnel of para-military forces, the country side is completely in control of Maoist who are commonly referred as Naxals.

‘One can not move according to his will in the area, he needs to send message to dada log read Naxals through their invisible informers. Journalist like us have standing instructions to move with window panes open and music on otherwise you might be misconstrued as a policewala inviting triggering of blast already laid on the roads.

To get an idea of the Bastar village I drop in at Dantewada without informing anybody as police might follow those who are writing on Naxal issues. I meet my contacts and they take me to village Andodipada.

In one month village Andodipada has lost over a half a dozen men to diseases -- most of them water borne. Andodipada, tucked inside deep jungles of south Bastar, some 30 kilometres from Dantewada district headquarter, is like any other village in this part of the country where people live under constant fear of Naxal and security forces alike.

Going towards south from Dantewada -- which is barely a town as the activities of government employees and security forces are the only source of income for the locals -- we pass through Nakulnar where a few days back armed Naxals attacked a Congress leader and killed two in a night operation led by some 250 men and women.

Some 10-12 kilometres from here driving on a tarred road with several cuts and digging marks it is clear that we are in a naxal heartland. (Road cuts and digging marks suggest a possible landmine entrenched underneath. Accompanied by a local contact we reach Garhmiri village where a heap of toilet seats meant for total sanitation programme welcomed us.

From Garhmiri we take a walk for another 4-5 kilometres passing from paddy fields and crossing rivulets and nullahas full of monsoon water to reach village Andodipada. On our way meet people with their families busy sowing paddy in the fields. The village is part of Kuakonda block.

Distrust and suspicion is spread all the roads and jungle. Villagers don’t speak to the extent that they are wary of even telling the names of their village or specifying a tree species. People rarely speak to outsiders as they do not want to be misunderstood as ‘informer’ either by Naxals or by police.

Maoist laws have the strongest and harshest punishment for leaking information about them. On being suspected of passing information the only punishment is death penalty that too by chopping off body parts. Naxals do not have any ‘’appeal or dalil’’ (appeal or argument) for such crime, says Lasman Muria the only 8^th class pass individual of Andodipada.

The only sign of government presence in the village is a dilapidated roofless school building which stands shamelessly as the villagers tell us that the teacher of this 5^th class school last visited in April this year. No body in the village remember when any senior official from district administration visited the village.

Since most of the school buildings in remote areas Bastar division are occupied by security forces the Naxals do not allow making of new school buildings as they might be used again by force instead of children studying in them. However the school building in this village neither have classes nor police.

The village does not have road, so the potable drinking water as the bore-well digging machine cannot reach here. The villagers are forced to drink water from the nearby river and a small well kind of structure which collects from the hill. ‘’People falling ill during this season is common, we lost seven of our villagers recently’’ says Hunga Khawasi.

Last when my mother fell ill we took her on a cot to nearby hospital where the health worker gave some pills. Like hospital electricity is also a dream for this village. Though Chattisgarh is a power surplus state but hundreds of villages like Andodipada does not have power as lines have not been laid.

Children do not go to school but assist their parents in sowing. Harma Muria,42, have five children who help in his daily routine. His sons have gone for paddy sowing while his daughter collect wild mushroom for lunch which is mainly rice.

He walks for over 8 kilometres every week to fetch the rice from PDS shop where he gets 35 kilograms of rice. During summer he sells tamarind collected from jungles to sell it in Nakulnar market which earns him Rs 60-70 a week. Out of the money he buys rice which comes for Rs one per kilo under government’s antyodaya scheme. During monsoon like many other villages of Bastar, Andodipada too gets cut-off from the rest of world.

Except for rice and clothes everything of need is available for the family of Harma in the jungles. The country liquor called sulfi brewed from date palm tree is available in plenty and form an essential drink for all.

Harma does not know why Naxals and police are fighting. He also does not understand the communists or red-terror but he knows the Dr Raman Singh, chief minister of Chattisgarh who gives him Rs 1 kg rice.

The village does not have the government’s NREGS as the mode of payment through banks prevent this scheme to be implemented here. There are some 25000 registered job seekers under the scheme in Dantewada and Bijapur districts. However there are just a dozen branches of nationalized banks all over as cooperative banks have seized to work.

Keeping this fact in mind, on demand of CPI (Marxist), at some places cash distribution of wages was allowed but fear of money being looted by Naxals prevents implementation of the scheme.

Linga Muria earns Rs 50-60 every week which he says is enough for him to buy rice and salt. His family rear pigs and hens for meat and have cows to get oxen for cultivation. Interestingly tribal do not milch cow as they believe that milk is for calf not human.

Pandu Koram of a nearby village says ‘’dada log (naxal) take away a portion from the rice which we buy from PDS shop while security forces threaten us with guns if they know that Naxals have come to our house’’. Naxals collect rice from whole village as a measure of levying tax.

Linga Khawasi does not have any dream in his life his only ambition is to have clothes and enough rice to feed his family. He is now even afraid of going to weekly market as once he was detained by CRPF for suspicion of supporting Naxals.

Since south Bastar is the place after Abhujmarh where Naxals are fighting fiercely to establish their supremacy and capture the region with the passing of every day some new areas are reported to have come under the red-terror. Tadmetla where 76 security personnel and Chingawaram where a passenger bus was exploded in a landmine killing 31 innocent are in Dantewada.

Suresh Mahapatra, editor of daily Bastar-Impact, says ‘’gradually Naxals are capturing new areas. As a mark of protest against killing of Comrade Azad they blocked NH 221 for the first time by felling trees at various places.

To create confidence among people, that school buildings would not be used by police, roofs of new schools were made of cement sheets instead of steel and concrete but Naxals took away the pipes of such schools for making pipe bombs.

Contractors despite huge incentives do not want to work in the area so the roads whatever were made years back are vanishing in want of repairs. Mahapatra says ‘’it is only in the town places and block headquarters that Naxal presence is not witnessed, in fact the entire jungle area which is 97 percent of Bastar has gone in control of Maoists’’.

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Deepak Tiwari/Dantewada

A day in North Bastar (Abhujhmarh)

Abujhmarh – the unknown India

Abujhmarh means the unknown or alien place. Some 230 far flung villages spread in hamlets across 4000 square kilometers with a population of nearly 34000 comprising mainly tribal Marias and Gonds is actually ‘unknown’ for government. The place remains as the only patch in the country which has not been surveyed so far.

Surrounded by CRPF camps and inhabited by deadly Maoists (read Naxal) who had mixed up with local people, the life in Abujhmarh is still forty years behind from that of slums of Dharavi or Yamuna Pusta in East Delhi.

No electricity, no potable water, no schools, no health facilities, no roads and even no mobiles (which otherwise have reached everywhere) with dense forest and hilly terrain Abujhmarh is to India what Africa is to world.

Twelve kilometers from district headquarter Narayanpur, carved out recently from Bastar, which has just two blocks, village Kurusnar is the gateway of this unknown territory and the last point where one can see the signs of government presence.

The school building is occupied by CRPF jawans while the school runs in a thatched hut. The new school building is half finished as the Naxals have threatened the contactor with ‘dire consequences’ and took away his tractor.

Magru Ram Nuneti, a former sarpanch of Kanagaon few kilometers from Kurusnar, has left his village to settle in Narayanpur after Naxals asked him to leave. Since his childhood, Magru was picked up by the local Ramkrishna Misson Ashram school which works as an alternative to government.

He passed class tenth from the boarding school to become sarpanch. By becoming sarpanch he wanted to serve his own people but Naxals did not allow him as he did not fit in their plans.

Magru becomes our guide to the unknown territory supported by Abhishek Jha, a technocrat turned journalist of Narayanpur whose father settled here some 40 years back.

Riding pillion of motorcycle drove by Abhishek towards Abujhmarh we cross the road which has been cut horizontally after every 500 meters to block entry of security forces. These cuts also come handy in planting deadly explosives devices to ‘welcome’ the anti-landmine vehicles of police.

We reach Kurusnar and leave our motorcycles on the road to enter the area which security forces call ‘Pakistan’ and local ‘Marh’.

In our second leg of journey our new guide is Santosh Kumar Potai, a jobless class 8^th fail abujhmaria tribal. With his french-cut beard and black boxer shorts with sleeveless shirt, Santosh looks like a rebel but he is not. He is in fact a victim of Naxal-police conflict. He lost his mother Dasari Bai to bullets of CRPF men who tried to brand her as Naxal but her old age prevented them to do so.

Later she was declared to have been killed by Naxals to save the skin of police forces. Santosh’s family, hence, got Rs one lakh compensation. The money got him a motorcycle and a lifestyle which stands him out.

We walk with Santosh for some kilometers and cross a river which has some water left. The river water is the only source of life for the people living around. With scorching sun above our head, as the mercury had previous day touched 46 degree Celsius in Chattisgarh, I am tempted to wash my face and drench my clothes but Abhishek stops me.

He claims that water in Abujhmarh is so lethal that it can cause malaria. He gives examples of security personnel who died of malarial attack. ‘This water has malaria germs though it may sound absurd but I have seen so many cases where people became vicitim just because they drank this water’. He asks us to take this word forward so that some research can be executed to find out the fact even if it sounds very unscientific.

On the bank of river we come across a huge amount of abandoned medicines and condoms of government supply. Abhishek tells us that this is the speaking example of how government schemes functions in Bastar. ‘’Some health worker might have been given a task of distributing medicine and condoms in the villages and he has thrown them here and filled the false records’’, he said.

After walking for another half an hour we reach a small hamlet where children are playing while men are sitting drunk in half naked form which is their traditional attire. The men are in their traditional clothes and have no expressions on their face, they seems aloof of us and does not respond to our questions. According to Magru ‘’ Abujhmaria are light hearted and contended people who live in present and do not care about the past or hope for the future.’’

Santosh says ‘’they do not understand Hindi and are enjoying life in their own way after a good meal’’. We decide to leave them in their state and engage a young man in discussion who is less drunk.

Gassuram, 26, is a young man with three kids none of them go to school. He says ‘’our pigs, hens, lentils grown here with rice from Ramkrishna Mission shop is all we need and we have all these’’.

He walks for over 14 kilometres every week to fetch the rice from PDS shop in Narayanpur where he gets 35 kilograms of rice. Earlier he used to get rice from nearby Kurusnar but recently the government has shifted all ration shops to Narayanpur headquarter after reports of Naxals taking away all rice from shops.

During his visit Gassuram takes some forest produce to sell it in market and earns Rs 60-70 a week. Out of the money he buys rice which comes for Rs one per kilo under government’s antyodaya scheme.

Except for rice and clothes everything of need is available for the family of Gassuram in the jungles. The country liquor called sulfi brewed from date palm tree is available in plenty and form an essential drink for all.

The villages does not have the government’s NREGS but people have their own. Entire village of Abujhmarias work in a group to prepare field or house of any individual. Once the task is over the family whose house has been built will organize a mass-meal called ‘leor-java’ for the whole village, which will continue for two-three days. We spend some time in this leor-java.

During these days liquor flows freely with pork and meat prepared in huge tumblers. Children plays all day while women sit and sings with young girl and boys moving to isolated places.

Tribal here were in their own world without any sign of modernity in their lives and government’s interference so we decided to move on to a village Kanagaon – the ancestral village of Magru.

After walking for several kilometers towards south we come across several hamlets on slopes of hill with house neatly made with bamboos. All these hamlets have a stream nearby but the summer has reduced them to ponds. The houses have thatched roof with a huge courtyard with a nice bamboo fencing . Tribal here never repair their house instead they build new one when they move to new place of agriculture.

Since cultivation is of shifting type called ‘penda’ tribal keep changing their villages. While I walk ahead looking at the beautiful landscape Magru and Santosh talk to some tribal sitting under a mahua tree.

After exchanging notes they decide not to go to Kanagaon. I understand from their gestures that something is wrong. Magru asks me if I had got enough idea of Abujhmarh in last 6-7 hours.

While coming back we take a different route to reach Jamgaon in Kandadi panchayat. Here we meet a couple Gasru and Budni who are busy making bamboo material. The two earns 60-100 rupees every week when they go down to Narayanpur some 19 kilometres away.

Gasru says the money is enough for them to buy rice and salt. They rear pigs and hens for meat and have cows to get oxen for cultivation. Interestingly tribal do not milch cow as they believe that milk is for calf not human beings. They catch red-ants to make a chutni and fish from nearby Kukur river for their daily needs.

I show a five hundred rupee note to Gasru and ask if he an recognize it. Gasru looks at it with disbelief and says if it is a real note. He has not seen a Rs 500 note yet. After spending an hour at his hut Gasru expresses his pain unlike his fellow men whom we met earlier.

He says ‘’dada log (naxal) take away a portion from the rice which we buy from Narayanpur while security forces threaten us with guns if they know that Naxals have come to our house’’. Naxals collect rice from whole village.

Gasru does not have any dream his only ambition in life is to have clothes and enough rice to feed his family. He has never ventured out of Narayanur in his life. Once he had gone to Jagdalpur, 80 kms away, when Gasia -- brother of his wife Budni was sent to jail on charges of supporting Naxal.

However he does not want to remember that that visit as his wife has to sell off silver necklace to pay for the fee of advocate.

Family of Shivram is drying mahua to keep it safe in a special container for coming monsoon season when they can eat it when there will be nothing. His life is also like Gasru and Gassuram. Shivram is however little extra enterprising. He sell neem datuns every week on market day at Naryanpur to earn those extra bucks which take his income to Rs 150 every week but then he has a family of 13 members to feed.

The region untouched by modernity, where outsiders were not unless allowed by the district magistrate now does not have any intervention of state. Instead Naxals run their own government their called ‘janatana sarkar’. With the battlefield against Naxalism mainly concentrated in Dantewada in South Bastar the Abujhmarh in north remains the stronghold of Maoists where all three co-exists happily – the people, the Naxal and the security forces.

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Deepak Tiwari/Abujhmarh

June 1, 2010