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Centre’s outreach fails to make mark in Jharkhand tribal icon's village
Jharkhand, which was carved out of Bihar on Birsa Jayanti in 2000, observes its statehood day on November 15 every year.
The Union government earlier this year announced to observe the birth anniversary of Birsa Munda on November 15 as the national ‘Janjatiya Gaurav Diwas’, with this year’s celebrations including Prime Minister Narendra Modi addressing a tribal conclave in Bhopal and virtually inaugurating Birsa Memorial at the old Ranchi jail, where the tribal icon breathed his last in captivity of the British in 1900 at a young age of 25.
While the legacy of Birsa Munda gained national significance this year with the Bharatiya Janata Party’s tribal outreach, his name is one of the most prominent ones in Jharkhand and is often revered with a prefix Bhagwan (God) and several important landmarks such as airport, stadiums, academic institutions, jails and roundabouts among others named after him.
Jharkhand, which was carved out of Bihar on Birsa Jayanti in 2000, observes its statehood day on November 15 every year. On the day, it’s an annual ritual for politicians and bureaucrats to make a beeline to Ulihatu, the paternal village of the tribal icon located around 70 km south of state capital Ranchi, and deep inside the hilly and forested terrain under Arki block in Khunti district, which was in news for its Pathalgadi movement in 2017-18.
Despite deep inside the forest, ride to Ulihatu from the Khunti district headquarters is an easy one, thanks to a high-profile visit by home minister Amit Shah in 2017 when he was the BJP national president. A 12.5-km double-lane road constructed ahead of Shah’s visit remains in good shape.
On November 19, this correspondent visited Birsa Complex at Ulihatu. It was just passed the noon and a few workers were busy painting the iron grills of the huge round platform at the Birsa Complex, spread across seven acres and housing a boarding school, an upcoming hospital and a guest house.
Junior engineer of the district administration, Anil Shrivastava, who was supervising the renovation work, said it was due to recent spell of rain that they were behind schedule.
“Our Baba (Birsa Munda) has become the face of the state. Every year, top politicians and senior officials come here. But this is what shows the actual situation on the ground. Couldn’t this work have been started 10 days back and completed before Birsa Jayanti,” said Gangi Munda, grand daughter-in-law of Birsa Munda, pointing at the renovation work being carried by the team of the junior engineer.
One of the buildings on the complex meant for the school is now home to a company of Shahastra Seema Bal (SSB) stationed permanently here as part of the state’s anti-naxal operations. Though the school, from class I to X, became operational in 2008, it only has three permanent teachers against the sanctioned strength of 18, said its principal Kartik Singh Munda, who has been posted here since 2017.
“Till the first lockdown, we were given 13 extra temporary teachers who were paid on hourly basis. We have opened this month and a few students from class 6 and above have returned,” he said.
The memorial, with a marble floor, has a small two-room hut. The outside wall of the hut has two marble plaques. One lists the family lineage of Birsa Munda while the second has a name of two former ministers who laid foundation stone of the memorial in 2003-04.
As per the family tree, Birsa had two siblings, Konta and Kanu Munda. While Birsa was unmarried when he died, there isn’t much documentation available on Konta. Kanu’s grandson Sukhram Munda who lives just next to the memorial is the recognised living member of Birsa’s family. As a mark of honour, Sukhram and his family have been given the economic security by the state government over the past two decades.
In 2007, two sons of Sukhram — Jungle Singh Munda and Kanu Munda — were inducted as peons in Khunti district administration. While the siblings live in government quarters in Khunti, their parents Sukhram and Lakhmani Devi live in the house next to the memorial. While their house still has an asbestos roof, the floor is tiled and inner courtyard covered by paver blocks. The tiles and paver blocks were laid in 2017 ahead of Shah’s visit, besides piped water connection that draws water from a solar-power tank.
The renewed focus on Birsa Munda this year at the national stage brought symbolic windfall for Sukhram in an era of the growing identity politics. Sukhram, along with his sons, was flown to New Delhi the morning after Birsa Jayanti, with the trip being sponsored by the office of Union tribal affairs minister Arjun Munda, who represents Khunti Lok Sabha constituency. During his three-day trip, Sukhram was given the honour of inaugurating the Aadi Mahtosav at Dilli Haat, given a tour of the Rashtrapati Bhawan and a thorough health check-up at AIIMS.
While Sukhram Munda’s family has something to count in assistance, most of the villagers in Ulihatu still live in kachha houses and dependent on rain-fed agriculture. While majority of them speak Mundari, they also show reluctance in interacting with an ‘outsider’.
Shyam Singh Munda, in his early 20s, said he was “tired of speaking to press as it hardly makes any difference”, pointing at the slow pace of development of the village amidst tall promises made by successive governments.
“I am seeing this since childhood. Nothing happens. People visit our village once a while but things remain as usual,” said Shyam in broken Hindi, focusing on arranging the rice straw lying on the floor.
On November 15, almost the entire district machinery was at the village with the Sarkar Aapke Dwar programme. The 42-day outreach programme for service delivery at panchayat level was inaugurated by chief minister and president of Jharkhand Mukti Morcha, Hemant Soren.
Deputy commissioner-cum-district magistrate of Khunti, Shashi Ranjan, said there has been a delay in providing pucca houses to the villagers. “Pucca houses in this village are being provided under Shaheed Gram Vikas Yojna and not under the PM Awas Yojna. The villagers had been demanding bigger houses. Now all formalities have been completed. Few from the village were even given certificates for their entitlements. All houses would be completed soon,” said Ranjan.
As per the 2011 census, Ulihatu has 196 families with a population of 1,126, including 675 male and 451 female with an average sex ratio of 668, much lower than that of state at 948.
Ranjan said they are all set to inaugurate the hospital within a fortnight, while refusing to provide details about the total cost incurred in the project. “I don’t have the figures… as funds from tourism department are also involved in it,” he added.
Karia Munda, eight-time BJP MP from Khunti and one of the tallest tribal leaders in the country, expressed displeasure over the prevailing state of affairs.
“It was in mid 90s when then chief minister, Lalu Prasad, made a visit to Ulihatu. Then we should to have a tribal welfare commissioner. With active support from him, I got funds worth ₹3.5 crore sanctioned for development of Birsa Munda memorial and the complex around 1996-97. But the funds were not released. After creation of Jharkhand, we got that money back and then the development work started,” said Karia Munda, sitting in his ancestral home in Angira village on the outskirts of the Khunti district headquarters.
Munda underlined that none of the governments in the state, irrespective of party, gave due importance and urgency towards development of the iconic village.
Sukhram, however, expressed hopes that the renewed focus on his grandfather at the national stage might bring changes in life of the tribals across the state.
“The key, however, is that tribals are given good education and modern training in whichever work they do. Be it farming or poultry or any other work, they should be given proper training and exposure with the best practices in the trade,” Sukhram said on his return to Ranchi airport from New Delhi on Friday, expressing happiness about his experience of flying and the attention he received in the national Capital.
