Monday, March 15, 2010

We are the purest of them all


 

 

We were driving to Garhera, described as the worst village in the surrounding areas. Mr D Singh (DS) who is driving the car tells me that all one caste villages tend to be filthy

because no one is less equal to another.

I ask him what he means. He tells me that Garhera is a village where only Thakurs live. No one wants to stoop down to the level of cleaning the streets.

Enter their houses and be assured that everything is spic and span.Almost everyone in the village owns land- something unique in this area.

Yet, on the outside, the squalor is comparable to that of an urban slum, to the worst of slums.

 

I was to meet the Pradhan.He was sleeping on a charpoy, barechested, wearing only a towel when I arrived.He woke up and ordered for chai .

I made lots of polite conversation and finally asked him about NREGA and about how many people had job cards. He said that this is a high caste village and  no one needed a job card here. I asked him what projects were in progress under the scheme.He said pond construction and the making of pucca structures for the borewells was on the cards.

 

I asked him if I could see these. He said that it was hard to get labourers in the village again emphasizing that high caste people didn't do such work.

 

 

It occurred to me  that in this village of filth , of black stinking water lining every street with houses with grand macho gates , a sense of greatness ran in the blood of its citizen any evidence of which was absent in any tangible form. The ancient delusion of caste superiority desecrated the streets. (Do I sound condescending, sarcastic, angry..? I think I am.Angry.)

 

One of the Pradhan's points taken though. Villages with a high SC population get more funds and privileges under Mayavati's government.

 

 

All the village Pradhans had to contribute 5000 Rupees each for Mayavati's birthday celebrations and 1000 Rupees from the village's ration account share.

 

Let's think about the structures we create man coz if they suck, it's gonna take generations to get rid of them.!That's just how profound I can be right now..

 

 

 

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