Dumka--Maluti was humid on Saturday night. The sweat did not help lubricate conversations; it made people abrasive. What made matters worse was that one of the men with the shortest fuse in the village – on the border with West Bengal’s Birbhum district – was the Chief Minister of Jharkhand Raghubar Das.
Das must have – at least his press advisors did – imagined this visit to Dumka district to involve sitting on charpoys and sleeping in mud houses, while temple bells chimed in the background. After all, this was the first rural chief ministerial sleepover in a state, where 76 per cent of the general population lives in villages. Das had ordered his 10 ministers to spend the night at various villages across the state; Lois Marandi, from Dumka, was also present at Maluti on Saturday.
The heat, however was threatening to spoil it all. After performing a puja at one of the 72 temples in the village and addressing a janta darbar, the CM had to confine himself to the only air-conditioned room in the village. He met his callers, including Gopaldas Mukherjee, a resident who has spent his retired life to the temples’ conservation.
Maluti, 55 km from Dumka and 18 km from Birbhum’s Rampurhat, is famous for its 16th century temples. Of the 108 constructed by the Baj Basanta dynasty – Maluti was its capital – 72 survive today.
Das was not the first one to lose the battle to the heat wave: in the sweaty corridors of the 18-room lodge where he was staying, squabbles broke out over the din of multiple diesel generators. Outside, Maluti was in the dark, going through another of its interminably long power outages.
“That light you see beyond the edge of the village? That’s Birbhum. We have to sit here and be jealous of what they have got across the stream,” said Anjan Rai, a resident. Rai was part of a group of about 200 people who would contribute to the temperature of the day: they were para-teachers, here to crash the December-installed government’s largest public relations outreach party.
Das first exhibited irritability when asked at an impromptu press conference his reasons for staying the night in a village. It was a harmless enough question from the reporter of a reputed Bengali daily; an opportunity for the CM to explain his vision. Instead, Das retaliated with a certain venom, “It is our right as members of the government to stay wherever we want to, whenever we want to. Do not look for negative things all the time.” The CM ended the meeting abruptly.
Indian Express
