This place boasts of a Prime Minister called Chandrasekhar. It is also 'hometown' to India's most talked about gang rape victim Nirbhaya. Puja Awasthi travels across Ballia to find aspirational Bharat clashing with resurgent India
“Myself, Shilpi Pandey. I am prepare for BHU Mass Communication and journalism admission (sic)”, bubbles the 21-year-old who lives in Sri Ram Vihar Colony in Uttar Pradesh’s Ballia. Like Pandey, there is at least one member from every family in this midsized colony studying English at the branch of what is locally advertised as ‘India’s largest institute of spoken English’. Pandey spent three months -- two hours for five days every week — at the institute to fix a lack of confidence and came out convinced that she had finally set out on the path to a bright future, her ‘bright’ being a career in the television industry. “I will do whatever it takes and go wherever I have to,” she says with admirable determination once the conversation has settled into Hindi- a language she is more comfortable with.
Some 40 km from Pandey’s home, in the village of Medourah Kalan, that dream to make it big has propelled a few members from almost each of its 500 families to seek a life outside the district which offers few employment opportunities, despite being dotted by some 80 degree colleges. The victim of the gang rape that happened on December 16, 2012 in Delhi, belonged to one such family.
“When the incident happened, girls were scared to go to college which is 10 kilometres from here. But staying back is not an option. Development has not come to us. There is no future here”, says Paras Nath Yadav, the 40-year-old former pradhan of the village.
Yadav’s two brothers live and work elsewhere and he admits that had it not been for an early political initiation, he too would have quit.
Back in Ballia, Rajeev Kumar, the head of the political science department at the Shri Murli Manohar Town PG College sits in his airy, first floor office where a gleaming slim screen computer rests atop a dusty table, and explains that an acute feeling of insecurity is driving migration in the district’s 90 per cent-plus rural population. “Half of those who work as farmers do not own land. They suffer forced labour and sexual exploitation. Despite the river (Ganga) changing course, land surveys have not been re-done. Local elites have been permitted a free run in establishing unlawful control over land. Trapped in such dismal circumstances, low castes migrate with the hope that hard work elsewhere will allow them a chance at a decent life. In the case of the middle class, it is the spirit to exert which is at work”, he says. An example of that spirit having outpaced what the district has to offer is served by Kumar’s own work place where the library is in the process of being digitalised and the campus is being turned into a Wi Fi zone despite 10-hour electricity cuts being the norm. Below his office, girls make a beeline to fill in forms that will make them eligible for the state government’s free laptop scheme (aimed at those who cleared their class 12 examinations last year), but none of those questioned have an answer to how the machines will work in the absence of power. “That is why I want to get out”, says a science undergraduate. Fair point.
The push factors for migration (ie lack of employment opportunities) that work so forcefully in Ballia, are not unique to it. They spread across Uttar Pradesh, which makes up the largest slice of rural and urban interstate migrations that have contributed to adding approximately 22 million new people to the population of destination cities, of which Delhi remains the most popular.
In 1983, it was to Delhi that Badri Singh, the father of the gang rape victim migrated in search of a better life. Working double shifts as a loader with a private airline and getting less than five hours of sleep a night, he had made peace with the realisation that while the better life would skip him, it would definitely come to his three children.
It is the tantalising possibility of this promise that feeds the migratory stream despite lowly skilled migrants mostly ending up in ghettos and drawing the ire of original inhabitants of the destination city. The perpetrators of the December 16 crime in Delhi which rocked an entire nation, also migrants from small towns and villages, were the ugly consequence of a fading of that promise and the resulting economic, social and psychological deprivation.
Yet, with each generation, the illusion of the promise grows more fantastic.“In big cities, it is easier to get returns on your hard work. You are not known for your caste. Your qualification and your job speak for you”, offers 17-year-old Vivek Singh who is a first year student of commerce at a local college. He is aiming for a “MBA with good marks” after which he hopes to find a “manager’s job in a financial company”. His reference point is an uncle who is in the army, not his father who is a teacher.
To underscore his point on caste, Singh says that while the whole world was raising its voice in support of the 23- year-old Delhi gang rape victim, in Ballia, she was still defined by her standing in the caste hierarchy. “We took out a candle march and burned some effigies, but there was constant talk about her caste, and about her parent’s failure to control her. Imagine that happening in a big city where factories are well developed”, he asks, connecting economic prosperity with a more inclusive social milieu.
In the course of a day spent in Ballia, this is not the sole disturbing observation on the Delhi gang rape victim. Says Ramendra Dwivedi, a local journalist,“There was a muted but palpable sense of resentment that a family of lowly standing had garnered undue attention. The question kya mila (what did the family get) was of greatest interest. The conflict between big city values and small city aspirations was marked.” Dwivedi’s observation points to the complicated relationship between migration and acculturation, a relationship burdened by loss, alienation, dislocation and isolation. It hinges on a complicated equation--clinging to the security of a native identity hawked through culture and caste-based associations while reworking old ties through an economic lens.
Much of the blame for the lack of opportunities lies with the government. In the cause and effect logic of economic activity, the absence of basic infrastructure has turned industry off the region. Thus, while the per capita income of western Uttar Pradesh stands at Rs 15,869, 21 districts of eastern UP have an income of only Rs 9,288 per person.
Industry experts believe that focused hard sell can improve the districts’ economy, as the western region is saturated with industries. In the absence of that focus, eastern UP’s income has remained worse than even that of Bundelkhand which with a per capita income of Rs 12,878 attracts special packages from the centre and the state—a regional anomaly that is explained in part by the more acute nature of distress in Bundelkhand where debt and drought have fuelled farmers’ suicides and captured political imagination. The state’s freshly announced ‘New Infrastructure and Industrial Investment Policy, 2012’ which offers 100 percent exemption in stamp duty and a capital interest subsidy scheme for industries set up in the eastern districts of the state, is yet to yield results. Only the proposed airport at Kushinagar has drawn investor interest for its tourism affecting potential.
More specifically, of the 104 Industrial Entrepreneurs Memoranda (IEM) the initial application for approval to start an industry, filed between April 1, 2012 and January 31, 2013, not a single one proposes an industry for Ballia or for any of the other eastern district except Varanasi and Sonebhadra. This is a telling contrast to Noida, which has attracted 35 new proposals. Even the 1,047 km Ganga Expressway—an access controlled eight lane project that was announced in 2007, to connect Ballia to Noida and thus fuel a more even growth, has been stalled in court.
Ballia’s most recent cause for dissent came from this year’s Railway budget which announced a bi-weekly train to Delhi, but selected its point of origin in Mau (71 kilometres from Ballia), despite representations to the ministry that a train be introduced from Ballia in memory of the bahadur beti (brave daughter) as she is locally referred to.
Krishna Kumar Upadhyay, better known by his moniker `Kaptan’ is the convenor of the Purvanchal Vikas Manch, a body demanding statehood for the state’s eastern region. He connects the example of the train to the other slights that are regularly handed to Ballia. “From the inability to procure land to the disinterest of entrepreneurs, from the non-feasibility of having a medical university to the administrative logic of not setting up a university —there is always a ready answer for why things cannot happen in Ballia”, he says as he prepares to leave for Delhi to press for a route change for the train and demand a 50 per cent reservation quota for Ballia on it.
“Myself, Shilpi Pandey. I am prepare for BHU Mass Communication and journalism admission (sic)”, bubbles the 21-year-old who lives in Sri Ram Vihar Colony in Uttar Pradesh’s Ballia. Like Pandey, there is at least one member from every family in this midsized colony studying English at the branch of what is locally advertised as ‘India’s largest institute of spoken English’. Pandey spent three months -- two hours for five days every week — at the institute to fix a lack of confidence and came out convinced that she had finally set out on the path to a bright future, her ‘bright’ being a career in the television industry. “I will do whatever it takes and go wherever I have to,” she says with admirable determination once the conversation has settled into Hindi- a language she is more comfortable with.
Some 40 km from Pandey’s home, in the village of Medourah Kalan, that dream to make it big has propelled a few members from almost each of its 500 families to seek a life outside the district which offers few employment opportunities, despite being dotted by some 80 degree colleges. The victim of the gang rape that happened on December 16, 2012 in Delhi, belonged to one such family.
“When the incident happened, girls were scared to go to college which is 10 kilometres from here. But staying back is not an option. Development has not come to us. There is no future here”, says Paras Nath Yadav, the 40-year-old former pradhan of the village.
Yadav’s two brothers live and work elsewhere and he admits that had it not been for an early political initiation, he too would have quit.
Back in Ballia, Rajeev Kumar, the head of the political science department at the Shri Murli Manohar Town PG College sits in his airy, first floor office where a gleaming slim screen computer rests atop a dusty table, and explains that an acute feeling of insecurity is driving migration in the district’s 90 per cent-plus rural population. “Half of those who work as farmers do not own land. They suffer forced labour and sexual exploitation. Despite the river (Ganga) changing course, land surveys have not been re-done. Local elites have been permitted a free run in establishing unlawful control over land. Trapped in such dismal circumstances, low castes migrate with the hope that hard work elsewhere will allow them a chance at a decent life. In the case of the middle class, it is the spirit to exert which is at work”, he says. An example of that spirit having outpaced what the district has to offer is served by Kumar’s own work place where the library is in the process of being digitalised and the campus is being turned into a Wi Fi zone despite 10-hour electricity cuts being the norm. Below his office, girls make a beeline to fill in forms that will make them eligible for the state government’s free laptop scheme (aimed at those who cleared their class 12 examinations last year), but none of those questioned have an answer to how the machines will work in the absence of power. “That is why I want to get out”, says a science undergraduate. Fair point.
The push factors for migration (ie lack of employment opportunities) that work so forcefully in Ballia, are not unique to it. They spread across Uttar Pradesh, which makes up the largest slice of rural and urban interstate migrations that have contributed to adding approximately 22 million new people to the population of destination cities, of which Delhi remains the most popular.
In 1983, it was to Delhi that Badri Singh, the father of the gang rape victim migrated in search of a better life. Working double shifts as a loader with a private airline and getting less than five hours of sleep a night, he had made peace with the realisation that while the better life would skip him, it would definitely come to his three children.
It is the tantalising possibility of this promise that feeds the migratory stream despite lowly skilled migrants mostly ending up in ghettos and drawing the ire of original inhabitants of the destination city. The perpetrators of the December 16 crime in Delhi which rocked an entire nation, also migrants from small towns and villages, were the ugly consequence of a fading of that promise and the resulting economic, social and psychological deprivation.
Yet, with each generation, the illusion of the promise grows more fantastic.“In big cities, it is easier to get returns on your hard work. You are not known for your caste. Your qualification and your job speak for you”, offers 17-year-old Vivek Singh who is a first year student of commerce at a local college. He is aiming for a “MBA with good marks” after which he hopes to find a “manager’s job in a financial company”. His reference point is an uncle who is in the army, not his father who is a teacher.
To underscore his point on caste, Singh says that while the whole world was raising its voice in support of the 23- year-old Delhi gang rape victim, in Ballia, she was still defined by her standing in the caste hierarchy. “We took out a candle march and burned some effigies, but there was constant talk about her caste, and about her parent’s failure to control her. Imagine that happening in a big city where factories are well developed”, he asks, connecting economic prosperity with a more inclusive social milieu.
In the course of a day spent in Ballia, this is not the sole disturbing observation on the Delhi gang rape victim. Says Ramendra Dwivedi, a local journalist,“There was a muted but palpable sense of resentment that a family of lowly standing had garnered undue attention. The question kya mila (what did the family get) was of greatest interest. The conflict between big city values and small city aspirations was marked.” Dwivedi’s observation points to the complicated relationship between migration and acculturation, a relationship burdened by loss, alienation, dislocation and isolation. It hinges on a complicated equation--clinging to the security of a native identity hawked through culture and caste-based associations while reworking old ties through an economic lens.
Much of the blame for the lack of opportunities lies with the government. In the cause and effect logic of economic activity, the absence of basic infrastructure has turned industry off the region. Thus, while the per capita income of western Uttar Pradesh stands at Rs 15,869, 21 districts of eastern UP have an income of only Rs 9,288 per person.
Industry experts believe that focused hard sell can improve the districts’ economy, as the western region is saturated with industries. In the absence of that focus, eastern UP’s income has remained worse than even that of Bundelkhand which with a per capita income of Rs 12,878 attracts special packages from the centre and the state—a regional anomaly that is explained in part by the more acute nature of distress in Bundelkhand where debt and drought have fuelled farmers’ suicides and captured political imagination. The state’s freshly announced ‘New Infrastructure and Industrial Investment Policy, 2012’ which offers 100 percent exemption in stamp duty and a capital interest subsidy scheme for industries set up in the eastern districts of the state, is yet to yield results. Only the proposed airport at Kushinagar has drawn investor interest for its tourism affecting potential.
More specifically, of the 104 Industrial Entrepreneurs Memoranda (IEM) the initial application for approval to start an industry, filed between April 1, 2012 and January 31, 2013, not a single one proposes an industry for Ballia or for any of the other eastern district except Varanasi and Sonebhadra. This is a telling contrast to Noida, which has attracted 35 new proposals. Even the 1,047 km Ganga Expressway—an access controlled eight lane project that was announced in 2007, to connect Ballia to Noida and thus fuel a more even growth, has been stalled in court.
Ballia’s most recent cause for dissent came from this year’s Railway budget which announced a bi-weekly train to Delhi, but selected its point of origin in Mau (71 kilometres from Ballia), despite representations to the ministry that a train be introduced from Ballia in memory of the bahadur beti (brave daughter) as she is locally referred to.
Krishna Kumar Upadhyay, better known by his moniker `Kaptan’ is the convenor of the Purvanchal Vikas Manch, a body demanding statehood for the state’s eastern region. He connects the example of the train to the other slights that are regularly handed to Ballia. “From the inability to procure land to the disinterest of entrepreneurs, from the non-feasibility of having a medical university to the administrative logic of not setting up a university —there is always a ready answer for why things cannot happen in Ballia”, he says as he prepares to leave for Delhi to press for a route change for the train and demand a 50 per cent reservation quota for Ballia on it.
For More IIPM Info, Visit below mentioned IIPM articles
