Village life in India

Contrary to the general urban perception in India, villagers are not always wearing long faces and being perpetually sad. As a matter of fact, they are not as stressed and depressed as their urban counterparts. Though no more content with the situation they find themselves in, they are not exasperated either. There is drive and willingness to generate surplus income, in order to acquire inspirational lifestyle products.

Koilakh, a village 14 km. east of the town of Madubani in the state of Bihar, has undergone a drastic change in the last 25 years. The population of this village used to be around 7,000, and the upper caste of Brahmins made up around half of them. The rest were divided among various lower castes that are commonly referred as backwards or as outcasts.

Brahmins are educated and have landed properties as well. They are economically more stable, because they do not depend upon income from agriculture and take up vocations well-suited for their qualifications and temperaments. Those who rely solely upon agriculture have a very poor economic background.

Other than Brahmins, most of the villagers used to be dependent upon agriculture as a sharecropper or farm laborer. Some of them were also well off, but they were too few. The village economy was sustained through the expenditure of the Brahmins, a situation that now has been completely reversed.

Lalu Prashad Yadav, a product of the movement launched by Jay Prakash Narayan, recognized the simmering discontent and anger amongst the marginalized and disadvantaged section of society and seized upon the opportunity to usher himself in as the savior of the downtrodden and unprivileged. The Mandal Report, and the subsequent agitation against it, split the society in two. Lalu deliberately fueled people’s anger and emerged as the undisputed leader of a large coalition representing the upper castes.

But Lalu had only his own interest in mind and did nothing for the people who trusted him to work to better their situation. Lalu indulged in trickery and ensured that his workers actually ruled the state, by proxy. As a result, all the anti-social elements of society, seeking justice, started harassing the upper castes, forcing most of them to seek refuge outside the state.

Much earlier, before the arrival of Lalu onto the political scene of Bihar, those who were poor and desperately unemployed had already started migrating to other parts of India, in search of greener pastures. The young and literate moved to the cities, while others went to Punjab, as the nature of the jobs there was familiar to them, and they were comfortable with that. Work in Punjab provided them with money in hand, which they had seldom had before. What started as a trickle became a flood, and soon all the able-bodied people, of all ages, were moving away to find jobs. The situation came to the point where finding laborers in the village became extremely difficult, and their wages became comparable to that found in larger towns.

The education system collapsed, social harmony deteriorated, and civil society rotted, so the Brahmins had no choice but to leave the village for the cities. Those settled in towns started avoiding frequent visits to the village, which gradually led them to make only the occasional visit.
Koilakh, once a thriving village, became the home of the unemployed, disabled, and elderly persons who were solely dependent on farming. The village lost its luster and began to look deserted as people started gravitating away from village activities.

Due to encouragement provided by some local caste-conscious leaders, non-Brahmins started to assert themselves and those who opposed their wrongdoings were harassed by the very biased administration. Using fabricated litigation was a widely used tactic. The Sarpanch of Koilakh was not able to get bail for more than seven years, despite having ample resources at his command.

Those who had emigrated in the 1980s and 1990s had settled themselves in their new areas and had amassed a considerable amount of money. They would later return to the village and buy land, irrespective of the cost. Soon, most of them started visiting the village regularly to flaunt their earnings and to invest in land. The village economy again chugged along and, gradually, it gained momentum.

There is much less visible poverty now, and most of the villagers are not as bad off economically as they were during the 1980s. Many Brahmins who depended solely upon agriculture were also economically distressed. Their sons migrated to cities to find work and sent money back to their families, supporting them financially.