In the midst of plenty and abundance, in the face of tall claims of progress and development, when satellites are a dime a dozen, when India has successfully launched a new under-water supersonic cruise missile with a 290 km range, world’s first of its kind, there is another world existing – the Fourth world, where its tiny tots stare us in the face and ask us a straight question: are we children of the lesser gods?
Who are they? The children depicted herein are the children of the Maler (Paharia) tribe in Jharkhand, Eastern India. Ethnically the Maler tribals belong to the Dravidian family. They settled in Jharkhand more than 2000 years ago. Hence they call themselves Yugvais or indigenous settlers of a remote past. In the writings of the Greek historian and traveller Megasthenes, in 302 BC, there is a clear mention of them as he came across them in the Rajmahal Hill Ranges in Jharkhand, Eastern India.
Today the Maler are at the cross roads. Behind them is a history that has spun a spectrum of events, some beneficial and some not so consoling. Migration from Konkan in South India up the Narbada valley in the north or from Mohenjo-Daro-Harappa of the Indus valley via Konkan might have been in phases that challenged them to brace themselves to emerging situations. The period at Rohtasgarh in North India, with a king and a fortress around them, might have been a secure haven for a time. However, driven out by inimical hordes of new races, they were thrown into the lap of the thick forested Rajmahal Range in Eastern India. This was their Kohistan where they enjoyed a secure freelance existence, untrammelled by cares and worries of worldly demands and unpolluted by industrial and electronic waste as it were. A sister faction of theirs moved across the Kaimur hills to Chotanagpur Plateau in today’s Jharkhand. The pure air they breathed was wholesome and did not call for a Copenhagen summit. The immaculate springs spouting from the heart of rocks were nourishing. The verdant green cover that blessed them with leaves and flowers, roots and barks, bulbs and tendrils for food and healing kept them vibrant. They dance to the tune of drums and flutes in free abandon during festivals and harvest celebrations. Their children hopped on tree branches and conversed with squirrels and parrots and competed with birds in whistling tunes. 
The thick jungles of the Range with its gorges might have frightened them initially. However, the urge for survival made them feel at home with their newfound homeland. Their struggles with wild animals and elemental forces made them adapt to the vagaries of nature’s flora and fauna and to tune up to challenges of life.
They enjoyed protection from their chiefs, the Sardars (Divisonal Heads), Naibs (Asst. Divisional Heads), and Manjhis (Village Heads). That is where they stayed put for at least for centuries till other wandering hordes threatened their peaceful and contented existence.
The recent past three centuries, which provide us with some written records, witness a tsunami-like experience in the life of the Maler. The Afghans, the Mohammedans, the British, the landlords, the extortionist money lenders, the cunning traders and the migrating Santals were elements that threatened the quiet solitude of their precious precincts. As if caught in a whirlwind, they were catapulted into a precarious precipice. With an unkind cut this period turned the Maler into Paharias or hill dwellers and allowed alien forces to overpower and pulverize them and forced them to drive up the hill peaks. The combined might of the late comers and vested interests derecognized these Jugbasis, the most ancient indigenous of the area, and thrust them outside the margin of the mainstream and into the waste basket of history.
No wonder, today the Maler, the so-called Paharia tribals, find themselves dumped, as it were, in the dustbin of modern life. With marginal literacy their sense of awareness is yet to get sharpened. No one among the so-called civilized world thinks that it is a national shame that this ancient slice of humanity is only about six per cent literate. The Government-run residential schools existing for over half a century have not helped any Maler to find a fitting place in life. That is even after spending crores from the National and the State exchequers for the education of this primitive tribe. The mushroom growth of NGO sponsored schools over the past three decades is, without exaggeration, a contributory factor in sowing at least a semblance of awareness among the members of the tribe for education.
In the early eighties when this author started social work among a section of them in some villages under Littipara Block of Pakur district, he was spellbound by their reaction when he quizzed them about sending their children to school. Their instinctive reply was: “What is the use? We struggle here in these hills; we fight with wild animals to protect our cultivation; we become victims of malaria; we die like flies. Does anyone care? There are Sarkar (Government-run) schools in many villages, but no teacher ever turns up. Does anyone bother? Who visits us to see whether we live or die? Then why bother about education? What about those Sahebs who are educated and are functioning as leaders and administrators? Do they ever care for us? Unto what end is education? Forget about us and you may mind your business.”
Those shocking words were instructive enough to reveal the rottenness of the system they were forced to reckon with. They freely spoke their mind out. I was only happy to hear them because they revealed the true nature of their plight. I was doubly happy that they gave utterance to their inner agony unlike some other tribes who harbour their anger and dissent till the bursting point.
Even the elected representatives wrote them off as a marginal group and were busy negotiating with outside forces to open mines and quarries on Paharia land. Since they have no elected representatives, their bargaining power is zero. Other tribes and castes who occupied their territory much later have flourished with rocket speed and have arrogated to themselves all the bargaining power in economy and in politics.
The moneylenders feast on the Maler like maggots in the absence of any meaningful government-sponsored loan or credit facilities. The loan and credit facilities end up in the hands of the supporters and brokers of politicians. Result: The Paharia tribals have no faith in the tribal politicians who do not care an iota for them.
The loudspeaker politicians never considered the Paharias even as vote banks. They totally neglected development oriented projects in Paharia. They even targeted NGOs working for the socio-economic welfare of the Paharias and rights awareness by spewing venom and vendetta on them.
The outside world was interested only in the hill produce of the hill tribals such as the tasty barbati, bajra, maize, bael fruit, mango, tamarind, cotton, bamboo and the like.
The civil administration in this part of the world is in shambles. Pakur being one of the mineral-rich districts is the least developed in Jharkhand.
The Paharias, who are the earliest indigenous settlers, are least cared for except for making a big show of developmental schemes for Paharias by sprinkling around a few latrines in villages as if to make them defecate near their homes so that the flies can easily hop from their excreta to their food. The poor are literally taken for a ride by the civil administration from district to village level assisted by a gang of middlemen, contractors and agents of politicians who have hijacked all developmental schemes. No wonder the Chief Secretary of a previous Jharkhand Government admitted that the developmental schemes have been infested cent per cent with middlemen. It is the combination of corrupt politicians, misfits in civil administration and anti-socials such as middlemen and business lobby who gobble up the share of the poor in maggot-like manner. Mr. James Lyndo who was the Divisional Commissioner of Santal Parganas for a time pronounced a hard hitting statement: ‘All politicians are crooks’. The poor have no voice to utter such a truth. At least one civil servant, who never stooped before politicians, had the honesty to nail the lie.
But the gloomy situation is bound to change. There is a slow growing wave of awareness among the Maler to let their children get the benefit of education. They are taking their children mostly to NGO run schools and hostels even as subsidized fees in these schools are still a heavy burden on them. At the same time, quite many are admitted in government run Paharia Residential schools. It is consoling to see that many have reached the portals of the college and are pursuing degree courses or technical studies.
Even as the Maler have stepped into the new millennium, they need to brace themselves for the growing threats and challenges. As far as the threats are concerned, one only hopes that the warning bells of Naxal/Maoist forces do not ensnare the poor and underdeveloped Paharias by taking them for a ride by placing arsenal into their hands to teach a lesson to the forces that keep them in situations too pathetic to describe. These warning bells, read warning shots, should not be brushed aside by the government authorities, public servants and politicians. It will be at their risk to turn a deaf ear to these timely warnings.
The Hindustan Times, Ranchi edition of Oct.24, 2009, highlighted a frightening news item which said: As schools shut down, students troop to Reds. The news item went on to describe how the Maoists are running a parallel system. They are running around 40 schools in Chattisgarh, and around 20-25 schools in Jharkhand, Orissa, Bihar and West Bengal. Maoist Politburo member Koteshwar Rao (who was killed in police encounter a year ago) told Hindustan: ‘We plan to double the numbers within a year or two’. Taking advantage of the dearth of schools and the breakdown of the educational system in tribal areas, the Naxalites are setting up more ‘formal schools’ to inject their extreme leftist ideology into the tribal buds.
Out of the 21,386 government schools in Jharkhand, over 1020 schools have no buildings, 3562 schools have no drinking water facilities, 17,523 schools have no toilets and 2965 schools have no electricity. Koteshwar Rao went on to say: “We began the noble initiative in Dandakaranya and it turned out to be a grand success. The show will go on, I bet.” Bal Dasta is the children’s wing raised by Maoists for indoctrination and for imparting training in militancy. Are our politicians and civil officials paying heed to any such news item or are they waiting for the sky to fall on them to wake up to the crucial burning issues the poor and the downtrodden are faced with?
The poor are no more willing to take things lying down. Nor are they willing to be mesmerized by the sops of window-dressing schemes that do not put the poor on the road to development. If the administration and people’s elected representatives do not change their habits and modus operandi in addressing problems of injustice, corruption and the breakdown of the delivery system, days are not far off, I am afraid, when the dreaded menace of counter forces will capture the centre stage by forcefully placing guns in the hands of the victims of the system to run amok. Thus, the poor, ignorant and neglected tribals may be sucked into another vicious vortex, thereby forcing them to become victims of two opposing systems. This is not an apocalyptic prophecy but a statement on reading the signs of the times.
It is time that the Maler realize that the benefits and schemes earmarked for groups like them are properly taken advantage of by standing up and demanding proper and effective implementation. The community has to realize that there are middlemen working in connivance with the administration to grab development schemes. Big money is involved. The chamchas (lackeys) of politicians are big sharks functioning as brokers. Even some local small scale leaders and headmen of the Maler community are effectively roped in by these ‘brokers’. More often than not, the earmarked schemes are signed up apparently in the name of the tribals whose thumb impressions or signatures are manipulated or got under duress or through offer of intoxicants. The loot is shared by the department, the politicians, and the brokers. The resultant poor implementation proves that the beneficiaries had been taken for a ride and that is nothing less than a mockery of justice.
If education is an important factor, it has to be imparted with proper intent. The students have to be motivated to benefit from a proper education. The word education comes from the word educare meaning ‘to bring out’. Hence, the education we impart to the students has to be with the purpose of bringing out the best in them, to help them develop their qualities and talents instilling in them an awareness of their identity and a search for genuine human development.
The teachers are not to get the whole blame. They are part of a vicious system that has topsy-turvy values. When I enquired as to why teachers do not perform their duty and are irregular in their teaching attendance, I was told by some villagers that the School Inspector faithfully extracts his pound of flesh, his monthly share, at the bank itself at the time when the teachers draw their salary.
The will to implement rules and regulations and to take to task those who subvert rules in the course of their service to the people of the land is so perfunctory. Often it is given a go by. Except for an occasional overzealous officer who appears and disappears like a comet, most administrators and other civil authorities cannot be absolved of their connivance and collaboration to subvert the system to their own petty advantage. Above all there is no political will when it comes to the elected representatives to give a just and humane treatment to the socially weak and economically vulnerable sections of society. Caste and class compulsions apart, corruption of the functionaries and the corrosiveness of the system hang like a Damocles’ sword above the economically weak and politically powerless groups of people.
In terms of development, the future of the Maler community depends on governmental infrastructures which assure better health, better education, training in better techniques of agriculture, training in development of their skills, better marketing facilities for their hill produce through purchase cooperatives, simple and workable loan systems, people-friendly banking system, better transportation in hill areas, adequate facilities for communication, safe drinking water facilities, proper lighting and energy facilities through solar schemes, interest free loans for housing, crop insurance, contour-bunding of their hilly tracts and upland areas, stopping illegal felling of trees by anti-social elements, weaning them away from superstitious and unsocial practices such as teenage marriages, excessive use of alcoholic drugs, consulting ojhas and gurus, accusing people as dains and witches etc., and instilling into them a scientific understanding of diseases, death, natural events and the like. They need to be helped to come out of their shells of ignorant and unscientific ways of thinking and acting. Their elders in remote jungles and hilly terrains perhaps were at home with a speed that might have been sufficient for them then. But today the world has progressed very fast and the ignorant and superstitious ones will be pulverized by the speeding road rollers on life’s highway.
Above all, the consistent and perverted rape of the Hill Range, the abode of the Paharia tribe, by outsiders has to be stopped. According to Mr. Victor Malto, the hilly areas which are the abode of the Paharia hill tribe are becoming unsafe for the Yugvasis who are the earliest settlers of this area. The areas the Paharias live in are rich in minerals. With wanton lust the business lobby is appropriating the dwelling places of the owners of the land by setting up quarries and mines. Even where lease is prohibited by law through the Tenancy Act, leases can be secured a dime a dozen through manipulation and back door tactics.
This is an important area that has to be looked into. The owners of the land should claim a good percentage of profit from the sale of the minerals that are extracted. They should not be satisfied with just a mere compensation and fringe benefits like matchbox houses as rehabilitation measures.
Hence, the Maler community needs to wake up and the rest of us have to allow this to happen. The Rajmahal Hill Range and its children are awaiting the development sun to shine. The face of the Fourth World!
(Excerpts from Frontier Existence by P.A. Chacko. Publd. 2011)