Exploring the heart of the Subcontinent - Part II

On the third day in Maharashtra my colleague and I were more adventurous than we had been previously, taking a bus north into Warora and Bhadrawati blocks. We hoped to have enough time to meet with officials from both blocks in one day. Warora is a tribal block but similar to Chandrapur (and to Bhadrawati) in being relatively urban, though urban here means simply a concentration of buildings rather than any real ‘developed’ built space. Some of the roads outside the towns (where the state government pays for maintenance) were in much better condition than those under the town council’s jurisdiction, which says something either about the comparative administrative abilities of local government in India or the comparative levels of budget skimming between state and local authorities. In Warora we met with an administrative officer who had a single desk in a hall-like room in the town council offices that smelt strongly of urine from the toilet next door. Thankfully this meeting lasted only a few minutes before the official took us to meet the Chief Officer of the block. This man’s office, like those of all the block head officers we met, was much fancier than those of his subordinates. For one thing it was carpeted and the walls were painted in bright colours. His desk was also very clean and the name stand placed on top of it was made of metal rather than wood.

Actually the government offices we visited were usually very similar. All contained a variety of different desks and chairs, none of which matched, that would be squeezed in together so that there was almost no spare room to move about in. Only in the most senior officials’ offices were computers visible and on the occasions that we visited none were ever switched on. The same was true of telephones, which were completely absent apart from in the offices of the block chief officers, although of course everyone had mobiles. I saw one printer in the dozen or so offices we visited: it was covered with a towel. The government offices themselves were a mishmash of buildings, often with wooden and concrete huts built as extensions onto larger buildings. Sometimes corridors would exit outside before you entered the room you were looking for. But apart from the obviously difficult (though perhaps only difficult in my eyes and not in theirs) conditions that the officials worked in, to a man (and almost all of them were men) they were polite, welcoming and willing to talk and listen. Some were even downright friendly. We were offered chai or coffee everywhere and asked twice on several occasions.

Having spent most of the day in Warora and Bhadrawati we returned to Chandrapur at around 5.00 and made our way to the district council. Here we met an Education Extension officer who was very helpful and made us wait to meet his boss, the district Chief Education officer for primary education. I had thought this man might be pompous, but although he was dressed in a white shirt and trousers to denote his rank, he was patient and affable. Like his juniors he gave us chai in small china cups. His desk was big and glass topped, and in front of it were three rows of three chairs, the first row of which we sat in. On top of the desk were piled stacks of folders, each with a hard cardboard back and thick string tied across the front. There was no computer in the office, but there was a phone positioned on a stool off to one side of the desk. On the wall to the CEO’s left was a map of Maharashtra and one of the district. As Nandita talked (and I smiled and nodded) staff brought paperwork in for the CEO to sign, their coming and going through the flowery curtain that hung in the doorway behind us noiseless.

On our last day in Chandrapur we discovered that each second Saturday in the month is a government holiday and all offices would be shut. So we decided to travel to Mul and Saoli, two blocks East of Chandrapur city. This proved to be easy to do and we spent a fairly comfortable hour on the bus, passing soaked woods of Eucalyptus and other trees, interspaced with tall clumps of bamboo and lush undergrowth. The road was well paved and straight for much of the way. In both Mul and Saoli we found there was little to do. We spent half an hour speaking to a headmaster in a school in Mul, but it was closing at 11.00 along with all others. I experienced a rather awkward moment here: as we sat in the school’s corridor talking to the headmaster and a couple of teachers, the children in the three classes nearest to us started to sing the national anthem. As the first lines sounded (a little tunelessly) the headmaster stood up while continuing to talk, but, not realizing that she had stood up because of the singing, I remained in my seat. Then Nandita stood up as well, but I still failed to link this with the singing and so remained where I was. After a few seconds more I realized that the teachers sitting slightly behind me were also standing and it quickly dawned on me that everyone was formally standing for the anthem. I should have just sprung up then as well, but by this time the children were well into the song and I assumed that they wouldn’t continue for much long, so I didn’t move, thinking that to leap to my feet as the singing stopped would seem odd. Unfortunately they did continue, for what seemed like an eternity, while I sat in my chair and the others stood to attention round me, no doubt thinking how rude and disrespectful this foreigner was.

After we had left the school we walked around for a bit and Nandita stopped to ask a few passersby about their children’s schooling. Few had much to say to us; the education of their children was clearly not something they thought about much. Whenever we stopped and talked to someone we drew a crowd of fifteen or more people, mainly men, who stood around us listening to the questions Nandita asked. My presence there clearly had something to do with their interest in us. I stood out anyway obviously, but had unintentionally made myself extra conspicuous by wearing a Kurtha (a traditional knee-length shirt). I have more sympathy for Gandhi in his white flannels at Southampton now. I drew stares from just about everyone, wherever we went.

In Saoli we found even less to do than in Mul, because now all the schools were closed. But after being in the town for only a few minutes we were stopped by two men on a motorbike. They turned out to be policemen and asked us to come to their office, a dreary, dank-looking building standing in its own grounds that had apparently only just been built. We were introduced to their boss, a Sub-Inspector of police, who was eager to sit and chat with us, presumably because there was not much else for him or his staff to do. He told us about the Naxalite activity in the block, which included attacks with AK-47s and explosives, allegedly smuggled in from Nepal. He claimed the bandits had support from the LTTE (the Tamil Tigers) and the ISI (the Pakistan intelligence service). He also told us about a tiger that was plaguing a nearby village: it had recently killed two villagers. I asked him if he enjoyed the posting and he said no, because the locals were too concerned with surviving through farming to be interested in cultural events, sports competitions or other outreach events the police elsewhere obviously undertake. His wife and children were also 700km away. We took our leave of the police after 30 minutes or so and from in front of their grim office caught a private bus back to Chandrapur. This subjected me to a video compilation of the dance segments of Shah Rukh Khan movies, set on loop. SRK, as he is known, is one of the biggest of big Bollywood stars and graces shop signs and billboards across North India, from the smallest village to the biggest metropolis. Once back in Chandrapur we had a late lunch and I unintentionally ordered the oddest naan bread imaginable: it was covered in cashews, cherries, apple and silver leaf!

We left Chandrapur for Ahmedabad late that evening, reaching the subdued train station in the dark and quiet of the Indian night. The Navajeevan Express was delayed, leaving us two hours to kill on a windswept but tolerably cool and virtually deserted station platform. As I made progress with Gandhi’s autobiography, small brown-bellied bats buzzed the far platform-edge where some spilt tea made a small puddle and male frogs croaked impatiently in the dark wasteland further off beyond the railway tracks. At last the train arrived and on we jumped before our two minutes were up. Unfortunately we found ourselves stuck in the dirty, reeking Sleeper compartments, with our access to the 3AC carriages blocked by a metal shutter and the inability of the young railway policeman to help us: no-one on the other side of the shutter had a radio as he did. Eventually we dashed out onto a dark platform in the pouring rain when the train made another two-minute stop. By pounding on the glass window of a 3AC carriage door we were able to get someone’s attention and gain entry to the cooled compartments where our berths were. It was 4.00 in the morning by the time we finally found our places and could think about sleeping. We arrived in Ahmedabad at 8.00 in the evening the next day.