A Decade Of Discontent

THE village of Karma, in the Gaya district of Bihar has not voted in over a decade. It is a matter of 'pride'. The leading lights of the ultra Left Maoist Communist Centre (MCC) in Bihar—Vijay Kumar Arya, Devendra Kumar, Ram Bali, Virendra Kaushal and many others—belong to this village, located in the interiors of the district. And at least here, the poll boycott called by the MCC is in force voluntarily. "Every time there is an election we go to the local school with the ballot box and wait from morning till evening, but nobody casts his or her vote. What else do you expect from a village where portraits of Mao, Marx and Stalin adorn the walls of the huts?" says a local official. 

Ten-year-old boys carry guns in this village and proudly proclaim themselves 'naxals'. And 70-year-old men, incapable of much physical effort, occupy vantage points on the outskirts of the village to keep a watch for the police. Their disillusionment with the system and hatred for those who run it is palpable. 

"Laloo says there is no development in this area because we levy tax. But what is this development that he keeps talking about? We need schools and a proper irrigation system while all we get is new panchayat bhawans, where the cronies of those in power can sit and gamble. All in the name of development. Naxalbari is the only way forward," spits out MCC activist 'Bachan Prasad', drawing approving murmurs from those gathered around.

The writ of the MCC runs in varying degrees in the Lok Sabha seats of Gaya, Palamau, Aurangabad, Jehanabad and Chatra of central Bihar, and horror stories of the means used by the organisa-tion to enforce their diktat abound.

 But in Karma, at least, the founders of the MCC—Kanhai Chatterjee, Amulya Sen and Chandrashekhar Das—who, in 1979, found even the 'line' propagated by the likes of Charu Mazumdar and Kanu Sanyal, not to mention those who claim to have "inherited the legacy of Naxalbari", the Vinod Mishra-led CPI(ML)—too "revisionist"—have succeeded in winning the people over.