Author: Varghese K George
Publication: The Indian Express
Date: January 25, 2004
URL: http://www.indianexpress.com/full_story.php?content_id=39857
Introduction: In 5 years, activists
Sarita and Mahesh brought water and dignity to Gaya village - and paid
with their lives
Neither went to IIT or was with
the Central Government. But the Satyendra Dubey story replayed itself tonight:
Sarita and Mahesh, two social activists who brought about a silent revolution
in the obscure Shabdo village in Gaya by organising extraordinary people's
initiatives, were attacked this evening. Sarita was killed, Mahesh is seriously
injured.
A local villager told The Sunday
Express late tonight that Mahesh had succumbed to his injuries but there
was no official confirmation of this.
Ex-Naxalite Sarita and a former
builder, Mahesh, mobilised people in and around Fatehpur block to revive
a centuries-old 45-km canal system which virtually changed the face of
this village. The Indian Express had featured their story on Diwali day,
This Diwali, Heart of Darkness is Bright and Shining.As they did every
evening, Sarita and Mahesh were travelling on a bike from Shabdo to the
Fatehpur Block Resource Centre when at around 7 pm, they were shot by assailants.
''Their work has not been liked by many. I suspect those elements are behind
the murder,'' said S C Sirohi, Gaya's Commissioner. These elements, sources
said, were most probably the local mafia, threatened by an empowered village
community. Mahesh and Sarita had helped bust several rackets in loot and
extortion.
Sirohi could confirm only Sarita's
death but Anil Kumar from Shabdo said that both had died. ''Police and
a medical team have gone to the spot,'' said Sirohi.
The change the duo catalysed in
Shabdo village-in the heart of the Naxalite-dominated Bihar-Jharkhand border-is
spectacular:
* They successfully weaned hundreds
away from their alcohol addiction
* People have erased boundaries
of their individual fields totalling 175 acres. Collective farming has
increased wheat production by at least 25 per cent.
* The two reached here in 1999 and
revived a historical canal system. About 35,000 people in 40 villages got
together under this scheme in which tanks were connected to a river or
a stream through canals.
* In caste and class conscious Shabdo,
the canal's construction saw unprecedented community action: Rajputs and
Dalits would work and eat together.
* When the Zila Parishad gave Rs
22 lakh, villagers donated land and built a community centre, anganwadi
and a playground.
''Once they gained momentum,'' Sarita
had told The Indian Express then, ''it was not difficult.''
Hardly so. Herself a member of the
underground Left movement, Sarita said she realised that power does not
flow from the gun but that people should act for themselves, ''someone
else acting on their behalf was not permanent.'' Her paths crossed with
a dissimilar one in which Mahesh Kant was travelling. Mahesh had come to
Patna from Haryana in 1979, started as a small-time builder who carried
concrete-mix himself and made it big in life.
He contributed a large portion of
his wealth to charity, but was disturbed at how ''activists'' splurged
his money. He was shocked when a Rs 20-lakh hospital he built in the village
was pilloried by the very people it was meant for. After heated arguments
over means of social change at a seminar in Patna, Mahesh and Sarita left
for the villages of Gaya as a team, sure of the journey they wanted to
take-which was cut short tonight.
