Llife is cheaper than Rahul’s poster in Kalawati’s village

Jalka is one of the twelve thousand villages dotting the area. Over the last three years, the village has acquired a stature of its own with Rahul visiting it. The village is now known as the village of Rahul’s Kalawati. The village belongs to the Yavatmal district which is yet to have a rail link. But the high incidence of suicide among the farmers in the area has focused international attention on it. However, this changed Yavatmal into a laboratory where the international agencies tried to find out how the local farmers in a liberalizing India still managed to survive or to comprehend the circusmstances that spawned a critical crisis for them. The representatives from international organizations including the United Nations Organization, world bank, international monetary fund and American senate have already visited the area to see its terminal illness. Their report is still awaited. But when rahul Gandhi mentioned kalawati and shashikala in his speech in parliament kalawati’s village jalka became a symbol of the crisis gripping the entire countryside in yavatmal where as if in a laboratory every single farmer was being used as a guinea pig.

When stepping into the fields of Kalawati’s village, one is confronted with long and deep pits and hollow surfaces. One wonders about the purposes of these pits. But when this laboratory became open to all and sundry, pandit shri ravishankar could barely help using it. He also began spiritual experiments which would calm down the farmers bent on committing suicides. Ravishankar’s experiments led to the digging of pits and hollow surfaces as they were meant for testing out his theory on how to help the farmers through the water of the tanks in the fields. As soon as Ravishankar himself left the place, all his experiments ground to a halt and his followers could do nothing in his absence. Not only that, the pits dug for the experiments got filled with water during the rainy season adding to the woes of the local farmers. Meandering through the footpaths when one moves towads the residential portion of the village, suspicions about the settlement being a political laboratory begin to get confirmed.

In delhi one may talk about rahul’s kalawati but here in jalka things are different. Here it is kalawati’s rahul whose posters are strewn over grass and are hanging like children from the dung-smeared walls of the flimsy houses. The big rahul posters are tied with ropes at all the four ends of the village and when the strong winds snap these ropes people in droves go to kalawati to inform her. And immediately these big posters are tightly tied and restored to their points. Some small size rahul posters come unstuck in the rain and find their way into the water. But other farmers in the village also expect so much of kalawati’s rahul that they hold even the broken posters close to their chests hoping to be noticed by delhi one day so their woes may as well come to an end. When the sulabh international gave kalawati five lakh rupees , the local congressmen began loudly claiming they had arranged this amount. When the villagers started going to the congressmen to get their share they were told the political leaders did not distribute money. The villagers could not believe it. When they enquired from kalawati as to how she could get the amount she told them it was through rahul’s grace. Even the congress state president said if rahul had not mentioned kalawati who could have given her money. In other words, it is rahul’s grace that matters, not the actual distributor of the gift money. As rahul can not belong to all, he is kalawati’s rahul alone. The village is replete with the rahul posters and their smithereens and the people of the village hope if not rahul himsel, at least his posters may yield them benefits. Building the huts in the village has cost even less than the posters adorning them. The village has only a few brick-built houses and most of the dwellings are made of bamboo, grass, plants, mud and dung. One can imagine the plight of the tenants of these huts when their dwellings get damaged or collapse. The morghade household gives a graphic picture of this situation. His hut got destroyed by the storm and the rain and rebuilding it would cost him about hundred and fifty rupees. But he does not have this amount. Somehow this man managed to get hold of the Rahul posters made of cloths and plastic and he so arranged them as to make them look as the walls of his hut. When the Sulabh Internation gave Kalawati money some state-level congress leaders visited the village and one of the congress workers took away the Rahul posters from morghade’s hut but when morghade protested this congress worker told him that he should not use the rahul poster as an ornament. When morghade drew his attention to the widespread use of the rahul posters in the village including the big posters being used by kalawati, the congress worker explained it was a matter of rahul;s kalawati not the other way round. So a compromise was reached as per which for two days morghade’s house was covered with rags and thread-bare cloths and the poster was fixed on a high platform. As soon as the congress leaders went back, morghade got back the posters.

It is not that the village has only the rahul posters. Ever since kalawati has been mentioned by rahul, the villagers have begun realizing if they hung the posers of the leaders coming from delhi their life would also change. It is by chance that rahul came only to jalka but every other leader has visited yavatmal. The latter is the burial ground for the farmers in vidharva. Most of the suicide deaths have been reported from here. During the last ten years in the whole of maharasthra 8 thousand farmers committed suicide out of which 5 thousand farmers were from yavatmal alone. This explained why sonia Gandhi visited the area during the 2004 general elections. During the vajpayee regime more than 16 thousand farmers had committed suicide. Then nobody thought that more than 17thousand farmers in maharasthra would commit suicide during the manmohan regime. Anyway, when rahul came to kalawati’s house her fate changed but this has set her neighbours thinking even if they had lost their lives a visit from rahul could have vastly changed the fate of their families.