Maa, I've Become a Collector: My Journey from Crushing Rural Poverty to the Corridors of Power

By Rajesh Patil

Rajesh Patil was born to poor farm workers in the backward Khandesh region of Maharashtra. He worked as a child labourer picking cotton, selling bread, and doing small jobs. But what set him apart was that, unlike most of his peers, he was driven by an intense desire to improve his lot through education. Against great odds, he moved to Nashik for a B.Sc. and then to Pune for an M.Sc. in statistics - all this with the help of freeships, scholarships and the support of his teachers, friends and well-wishers. By dint of his hard work, he managed to get into the Indian Statistical Service, but the Indian Administrative Service was his goal. Unsuccessful at first, he persisted until eventually he cracked the competitive exams and qualified for the IAS. Maa, I've Become a Collector is the inspiring account of Rajesh's struggles that has been a bestseller in Marathi, Hindi, Gujarati and Odia and motivated thousands of students in India's hinterlands in their quest for a better life. At the same time, it is much more than one man's story - it is a riveting and revelatory account of rural India

• Language: English
• Publisher: HarperCollins India
• Release date: Apr 25, 2019
• ISBN: 9789353029609

Rajesh Patil

Rajesh Patil is a 2005 batch IAS officer who has served as the Collector and District Magistrate of the Koraput, Kandhamal and Mayurbhanj districts of Odisha. He is now CEO and Director of Employment, Odisha Skill Development Authority.

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1

My Village

YOU can reach Tade – my sleepy little village at the foot of the Padmalaya hills – from Erandol in Maharashtra’s Jalgaon district in just half an hour, after a gruelling, bumpy ride in a local bus. Even as you approach the village, you wouldn’t feel like you are near civilization because of the dense greenery surrounding it. Tade is usually calm and peaceful like a sluggish python lying motionless. One rarely hears of noisy quarrels and scuffles among the villagers. If there are any, they are simply momentary breaches of peace, and silence would soon prevail. If you have the misfortune of visiting my village on a typical afternoon, you may encounter a few slumbering dogs, a handful of elders engaged in gossip on a platform around a tree and some housewives busy in their daily chores. A visiting guest or government official would have to wait till evening for any signs of activity.

Tade, home to a people displaced by a dam project, is now a well-planned and spacious settlement. Though sparse in population, my village is a sprawling one. Towards the eastern border, you would see the settlements of the Dhangar community. Towards the south, a platform erected for sit-outs, the milk dairy and the settlement of the Scheduled Caste people. The panchayat office is situated towards the north; to the extreme south would be the Bhil residences and behind them the village school. There are houses at each intersection of lanes. There are vacant areas in the west and the south, which people use as threshing floor or treat as dunghill for throwing waste. But in recent times, the threshing floor has been taken over by people who claim it to be their ancestral property.

The village has a natural slope to the north. As a result, excess rainwater and sewage flow smoothly into the pond behind the panchayat office. The open space in front of it is used for week-long celebrations and kirtans. Many a time, tightrope walkers perform there. Sometimes, it is also used temporarily by the nomadic families of blacksmiths and snake charmers. The village has a pleasant appearance: a raised platform called ‘par’ is the first thing one notices as one enters the village. The ‘par’ houses small shrines with intricately carved idols inside them.

The village has only four Dalit households and they are closely related. They earn their livelihood from the semi-fertile land that their ancestors had received as inaam, or grant, in recognition of their services to the government during the Raj. They earn a little extra by making baskets from cotton stalks, rearing goats and poultry, and playing drums at village functions. Some of these families have educated members working in big cities.

The Bhil community, settled adjacent to the village, is cut off from the rest of the communities. Their houses comprise only one room. They may be poor but they live life with zest. These brave men live in the present; they never worry about tomorrow. They earn their livelihood through hard work, looking after the farms of other people, and brewing indigenous liquor. They work six days a week, and go to Erandol on Sundays, the weekly market day, to watch a movie together and bring home meat to celebrate the day. A Bhil would never work on a Sunday even if his employer asked him to finish something important. It was a puzzle to me how this community survived. Very rarely would you find an educated Bhil. Despite all this, the Bhils are an extremely proud community.

There are many Dhangars, who are shepherds, in my village. They are quite different from the Bhils. The Dhangars are found in a few villages of north, central and western Maharashtra. Their two main occupations are agriculture and animal husbandry. They may be uneducated, but they are good farmers. Because of their hard work, they are quite well off. Hard-working, frugal and with no debilitating addictions, they are an extremely efficient community and evoke the jealousy of the other communities in the village.

In addition, there are four households of the barber community and a single Brahmin family in the village.

Womenfolk in the village are more hard-working than men. Apart from looking after their households, they work on the farm alongside men. Except for a few from affluent families, most women would work on the farm. Many a time, women are ill-treated in some families either by abusive in-laws or drunken husbands.

Each gotra of every community in the village claims to be the descendants of Brahma, the creator of the universe. Each gotra considers others to be inferior. As a result, there have been no inter-gotra marriages in the village.

Though the residents are hard-working, prosperity has always eluded the village. Barring a few people, the rest of the villagers are impoverished and permanently under debt. But when it comes to educating their children, they never hold back on expenses.

The villagers welcome anyone new, be it a schoolteacher, a quack, a wireman, a village talathi (revenue official), or the gramsevak, and often blindly trust the outsiders who are posted in the village. They also have borrowed money from these outsiders, who have, in the process, earned a fortune. These outsiders have also purchased land in the village, which has strengthened their ties to the village. So even after their transfer from the village, they keep coming – sometimes to attend marriages and social functions, or even to collect money lent to the people on interest.

Except the Bhil community, the others in the village own a patch of agricultural land and depend on it for their livelihood. When I was a kid, there were only a few wells in the village. Now every farm has one.

During the rabi season, the area surrounding the village is full of hybrid, long-leaf cotton plants. The cotton saplings of different heights, planted in rows, look like an attractive carpet during the season. However, cotton cultivation has become almost a gamble for the farmer. He chooses the seeds that others recommend and pesticides that others use. As most of the farms are under cotton cultivation, diseases spread easily and quickly to adjoining farms. Farmers instinctively spray pesticides that are reported to be effective or that are available readily at the local Krishi Kendra (agriculture centres), irrespective of their quality. The same story continues when it comes to buying fertilizer.

At times, these centres latch on to the farmer like pests till the final stage of selling cotton. They sell everything to farmers at inflated rates. Often, these centres mislead the uneducated farmers and sell them seeds of poor quality. Some of them go to the extent of playing with the lives of the farmers by selling them adulterated seeds.

Every year, farmers choose the best seeds that can give the highest yield. Because of high demand, a certain variety of seeds may get sold out very quickly in the market. This is when the farmer is forced to pay more to procure seeds. The people in the Krishi Kendra ascertain the farmers’ situation beforehand and openly rob them. The production and sale of seeds is entirely in the hands of private businessmen.

The traders who hover around the village when cotton is ready for harvesting have formed their own associations. The supply of commodities and their rates depend on the sweet will of these traders. Sometimes they sell seeds without giving receipts to farmers or collect higher amounts than what is stated in the receipts. The farmer quietly tolerates this injustice because he is already hard-pressed and is in dire need of seeds. Some of the farmers don’t even think it wrong or unjust; they accept all of it as part of their fate.

The future of the crop, however, depends on the rains. While they may be favourable sometimes, at other times they play truant. At times like these, those who have other ways to water their crop save their harvest. However, in recent years, the situation has improved due to drip irrigation and BT cotton variety.

After Dussehra, when the cotton crop is usually ready, the middlemen start hovering around villages like vultures. Surprisingly enough, farmers rarely have an idea of the market rates. The Krishi Kendra and the moneylenders start pressuring farmers even before the cotton is brought home. In such circumstances, cotton is sold to the trader at quoted rates. Traders often control the market rates. These clever traders often buy cotton from the farmer, promise to pay the amount in approximately fifteen days, but pay them much later. In some cases, the farmers are never paid.

Every year, the marketing federation purchases cotton, but their system works in a strange way. Instead of announcing the purchase rate at the time of sowing, it is announced when the cotton is ready for picking. Very often, traders quote rates lower than the announced rate. This makes the purchasing unit of the federation an instrument to exploit the farmers. When the farmer takes his produce to the centre, he pays the man who weighs the cotton, the coolies who lift it, then bribes the agents to get a proper grade for his cotton and finally pays bribe to get the payment. Because of this, farmers now think it better to sell cotton in the village itself even if they get less money.

The farmers’ misery doesn’t end here, but rather begins. To buy chemical fertilizers, he invariably has to borrow money from moneylenders. A Dhangar would sell his goat or his wife’s jewellery to buy essential agricultural inputs. And if lady luck smiles on him with a good cotton harvest, the creditors would throng around him demanding repayment. Then he would be compelled to sell the produce to the trader in a hurry or the entire produce would be handed over to the federation for a paltry sum.

The lot of other farmers who had sown other crops wouldn’t be any different, rather it would be equally pathetic. Nobody gives a paisa for ‘jowar’ blackened and spoilt by untimely rain. If the rains fail, there is nothing left for the farmer other than the vain hope that things may change for the better next year.

Quite often, a debt-ridden farmer has to part with his land to pay off his debt to the moneylender, who may well be a gram panchayat peon or a schoolteacher or a well-to-do farmer. I have often witnessed, with a heavy heart and tearful eyes, the agony and lamentation of such ruined families. I remember leaving their houses, wiping my tears on the sleeve of my shirt, in agony and in uncontrollable rage.

I still remember how Yuvraj Hari, Pundalik Damu and Hari Vitthal lost their farms. It all begins with a small loan for a wedding or to perform the last rites of a family member. Since the area is rain-fed, the yield is never more than the bare minimum required for his family. Thus, despite his best efforts, the farmer is seldom able to pay the interest, let alone repay the principal amount. That is when he decides to part with his land. Initially, the land is transferred to the moneylender for a period of three years on the proviso that it would be returned when the farmer repays the amount due. But rarely does the farmer manage to raise money to repay the loan, and the land is forfeited.

I remember how Ramrao’s household was destroyed. He had got married when I was just a kid. He left his brother’s house to live separately with his bride. The two brothers, who had lost their father in their childhood, had taken care of their mother ever since. Eventually, they got five acres each. Being a newcomer to farming, Ramrao’s agricultural expenses exceeded his income. Finally, he borrowed some money from a local moneylender. Every year, the amount increased. Ramrao worked extremely hard. But the income from his unirrigated farm was insufficient to repay the loan. A few years later, his mother died. Her funeral was extremely expensive and he had to borrow more money from the moneylender.

Ramrao was already under a lot of debt. His health deteriorated. Moneylenders constantly nagged him. Meanwhile, he tried to raise a loan from a bank and even begged relatives for money. But nobody helped him. Finally, he gave his 5-acre land to the moneylender. Setting the land free from the clutches of the moneylender is like trying to snatch a goat from a tiger’s mouth. Ramrao then became a farm labourer. It is still difficult to imagine what he must have gone through. The sparkle in his eyes was lost; his hair greyed.

There were many such Ramraos in my village.

The anguish of not being able to hold on to the ancestral lands is something that pains the farmer’s mind forever. It is hard for anyone to fathom the turbulence beneath his frozen exterior. A farm is not just a patch of land for a farmer; it’s his life. He looks after it like his own child. Ever since I was a child, I too loved my farm. I remember how dazzling farms are with crops in the rainy season. When the harvest is just ready, the farm looks like a beautiful bride.

There is more hustle and bustle in the village in the winter season. While one crop is ready, the next is being sown in the farms. From watering crops of onion or wheat to eating fresh green chilly chutney with jowar-bhakar, I love winter. Fresh crop of cucumber, radish, carrot and pods of tuar, moong and chawali were available on the farms in the winter.

There are fewer crops in the summer. Though the afternoons are hot, evenings are pleasant. At dusk, the activities on the farm look lovely in the mild twilight. Birds sing as they fly back to their nests. The women get ready to return home. Animals too return home with their owners. The bells around their necks jingle and the dust rising from their feet turns the entire atmosphere intoxicating.

Our village fares relatively better than the surrounding ones in terms of family planning, water supply, sanitation and, to some extent, education. The demography of my village has by and large remained unchanged for the last three decades. The education of girls has improved only recently. However, higher education is rarely accessible to them. But recently, a high school has been opened in the village, which has encouraged the girls to study up to the tenth grade. And some well-to-do families have started sending their girls for higher education, not to empower them, but because they believe that educated girls hold higher value in the ‘marriage’ market. Even grooms with good jobs, nowadays, prefer working women. In these matters, the financial background of the girls’ family is of secondary value. For example, Kautik was a well-to-do farmer; it was difficult for him to find a match for his elder daughter Meera simply because she was educated only up to grade two. He wanted an educated groom for her, but nobody preferred her. Kautik soon learned his lesson and decided to educate his younger daughter.

The village panchayat works in its own funny way. People who are elected from conflict-ridden relational groups, marked by jealousy and malice, are often illiterate and useless. However, it does not prevent them from roaming around displaying their new-found importance and throwing their weight around. They don’t understand the basics of the panchayat’s functions.

People in my village think very highly of themselves. They harbour ambitions that are grossly incommensurate with the posts they hold, be it that of the sarpanch, president of cooperative society, or president of the dairy cooperative. These people firmly believe that it’s their birthright to use development funds to fill their own coffers and enjoy the largest chunk of the cake, sometimes even the entire cake.

Tade is a fairly religious village. As far as I remember, there has been a week-long programme of religious discourse called Kirtan Saptah every year. During these seven days, experts in the art of kirtan called kirtankar from the Varkari stream of the Bhakti cult established by Sant Gyaneshwar come to the village for religious discourse. The villagers strongly believe that this blesses them. There is also a religious procession on the Ekadashi day. I had held the members of the bhajan assembly in very high esteem for a long time. However, I realized all too soon that some of them were addicted to gambling and were extremely corrupt too.

After the harvesting season, a village fair, the jatra of Goddess Mahiji, at Mahiji village on the other side of the Girana river, is an important part of the villagers’ social and cultural life. The fair, in which all sorts of household and utility items can be purchased, runs for about a week. It is also famous for the varieties of jalebi on sale.

I used to visit this fair when I was a kid. People from far-off places come. Most of them stay with their relatives or acquaintances in the village. Invariably, a programme of folk entertainment called Tamasha is organized every night which is very popular: people come riding carts, on bicycles or motorbikes. Though Tamasha was supposed to be entertainment for adults, I had clandestinely gone there in a bullock cart on several occasions and enjoyed

these shows.

Festivals are an integral part of the cultural life of my