An Alternative view on Modi's Gujarat

Illustration by Sorit            Opportunity Costs Of A Leader             The Gujarat model dispossessed and polarised millions, and scotched debate. Would India take it to heart? Suchitra Balasubrahmanyan

I moved to Delhi some three weeks ago after spending over three decades of my life in
Ahmedabad, prepared to be quizzed about the impending elections in Gujarat and whether the present government is likely to return to power for the third consecutive term; hear praise for peace returning to Gujarat after the violence of 2002, since no incidents of violence have taken place since then; and hear about Gujarat’s astonishing economic development and the prospect of the state’s leadership moving from Gandhinagar to New Delhi. I get all that.

But I also wonder if the people who ask me these questions realise that the Gujarat development model is inextricably linked with a certain set of ideologies, ambitions and aspirations which facilitate and sustain it?

In some ways, Gujarat is a microcosm of India. It has a great diversity of religions, castes and communities. The percentage of Muslim minorities in the state is just slightly lower than the national average. Dalits and adivasis together form about a fifth of Gujarati society, just as in the rest of India. (However, the Dalit-adivasi ratio is quite different). And all these communities, along with fisherfolk, pastoralists and the landless poor, have paid the price for helping realise the economic dreams of the state’s expanding, ambitious middle classes. Common property resources—coastal land, rivers and pastoral lands in rural areas—have been systematically taken over to make way for special economic zones and large industrial and infrastructure projects. Lakes and riverfronts have been gated and redeveloped as entertainment zones and real estate for the urban elite, dispossessing the poor, marginalised and the voiceless.

What is the worldview that underpins the shaping of such a socio-economic order? I am neither a political analyst nor a sociologist, just a teacher of design and I speak from direct experience. This is a development model, it’s plain to see, whose motive force is the ambition of the Gujarati middle class, made possible through large-scale dispossession and sustained only by denying dissent.

Anyone raising issues of equity, justice or sustainability associated with such a model of development is likely to be branded antediluvian at best and ‘outsider’, anti-Gujarat and pseudo-secularist at worst. Either way, dissenting views would find no space in the local media or in public discourse.
Since the 1980s, episodes of caste and communal violence have sharpened spatial segregation of communities, resulting in Muslim and Dalit ghettoes and upper-caste enclaves and declining social interaction. Muslims increasingly send their children to schools run by their community in their own localities. Within the municipal school system, they prefer the Urdu medium of instruction, while Gujarati medium schools are attended overwhelmingly by Dalit children. Schools are spaces for shared childhoods leading to adult bonds of friendship and understanding within accepted traditional social boundaries, but such spaces are no longer available. So it’s not Muslims and Dalits who are victims of social polarisation, but Gujarati society as a whole.

Anyone raising issues of equity or justice vis-a-vis the Gujarat model of development would be branded antediluvian at best, and anti-Gujarat ‘outsiders’ at worst.

After three decades of caste and communal violence, and almost fifteen years of the present political regime, we now have a generation of young Gujarati adults who know no other social order, no other way of being. The lack of access to diverse views through the media or public debate breeds intolerant parochialism and uncritical acceptance of the mirage of miraculous growth-rate figures. Perhaps, the middle class elsewhere is no different in its aspirations for a Gujarat style of development. But they might like to take a moment to consider the kind of social order that will inevitably accompany it and the political sanction it will receive. Would that be their idea of India? Significantly, cases related to the murder of an activist protesting against illegal mining in south-western Gujarat (he was murdered right outside the Gujarat High Court) and the blocking of community access to a river by a prominent industrial house are now before the Supreme Court. It is worth remembering that in the thousands of cases related to the 2002 riots that were closed in local courts, the process of bringing the perpetrators of communal carnage to justice had restarted only on the intervention of the SC. What will happen to democratic institutions of checks and balances if a Gujarati worldview were to be established nationally is anyone’s guess.

As a university teacher I can attest, as will other colleagues in design, architecture and management institutes in Ahmedabad, how difficult it is to even discuss ideas like secularism or social justice in the classroom, or to debate whether or not the state’s development model is socially and economically sustainable, or the human costs involved. Yet, I remain optimistic, happy with small signs that there is some intuitive goodness, even courage, in young people that shines through my experiences with students. This year, Id was celebrated at roughly the same time as the festival of Rakshabandhan. In a classroom assignment, students were asked to observe the social geography of the old parts of Ahmedabad. One student, a young woman, reported her observations of a side-lane flanked on one side by a Muslim mohalla and on the other by a Jain pol. Id decorations lined the mohalla-side of the road and rakhis were displayed for sale on the opposite side. She said she was really happy to see this, that the two communities could celebrate their festivals side by side. In another classroom project, architecture students were asked to visualise designs for the disputed Ramjanmabhoomi site, in accordance with the Allahabad High Court ruling. Each student in the class offered designs which, while complying with the ruling, brought the irreconcilable communities together, using the space creatively to resolve the differences.

While young people often echo the prejudice and parochialism that surrounds them, when given a chance to experience reality freely and to relate in a human way, they respond positively. Left to themselves, they can intuitively feel the rich web of their environment and respond humanely. But these impulses need nurturing, they need space to breathe and expand and be expressed. In Gujarat, and also in the rest of India.

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(Suchitra Balasubrahmanyan teaches at the School of Design, Ambedkar University, Delhi, and co-authored Ahmedabad: From Royal City to Megacity, Penguin 2011)

Thackeray's Historical Record - Lest We Forget

The violent legacy of Thackeray that neither the crowds nor the TV adulation can hide

• October 30, 1966 Thackeray's first Dusshera rally. A mob leaves the rally later to attack and burn south Indian shops and restaurants. The rally was also addressed by Congress leader Ramrao Adik. Attacks on south Indians were with the backing of CM Vasantrao Naik.
• Mumbai 1968 Hindi films brought out by south Indian producers are stopped by Thackeray's Shiv Sainiks.
• February 1969 Thackeray unleashes his goons against Kannadigas. 59 dead, 274 wounded, 151 cops injured in week of riots.
• June 6, 1970 CPI MLA and trade unionist Krishna Desai murdered in first political assassination in the city since 1947.
• January 1974 Dalit Panther leader Bhagwat Jadhav brutally killed by Thackeray's men, sparks off war with Dalits.
• 1975-76 Thackeray shocks colleagues, praises Sanjay Gandhi during the Emergency. By 1977, changes tack.
• Jan 1982 Thackeray supports Congress in Great Textile Strike. Breaks ties under duress, goes back three years later.
• From 1984 Shiv Sena carries out attacks on Dalit farmers in Vidarbha and Marathwada, destroying crops, burning huts.
• 1985 Thackeray calls for expulsion of 'outsiders’, proposes 1972 as cut-off date for having moved to Maharashtra.
• 1985 Cong CM Vasantdada Patil connives to help Shiv Sena win BMC polls with ‘Bombay part of Maharashtra’ issue.
• March 1988 The wonderful “saviour of Sikhs” Thackeray calls for a boycott of Sikh businesses in Maharashtra.
• 1988 Thackeray's 'boycott of Sikhs businesses' idea is quietly abandoned after extorting crores from Sikhs in Mumbai.
• Post 1989 + Mandal riots Thackeray finds a more convenient target for his political purposes: Indian Muslims.
• October 1991 Thackeray's thugs attack journalists, fracturing one woman's (Manimala) skull with a crowbar.
• 1991 Thackeray takes it one step further, threatens a local judge who had ruled against his goons with blinding.
• 1991 Thackeray's Dopahar ka Saamna editorial very sweetly compares women journalists to prostitutes.
• 1995 Thackeray: "If they have their Dawood, then we have our Arun Gawli." Because all politicos need a personal mafia.
• July 1996 The Ramesh Kini murder after long term intimidation. SS-BJP state govt tries to bury investigation.
• 1997 Kini's wife accuses Raj Thackeray of his murder. HC asked CBI to investigate but Mumbai police destroys evidence.
• July 11, 1997 Ten Dalits are killed and over 30 wounded at the Ramabai Ambedkar Nagar massacre. None were armed.
• Republic Day, 1997 Two adivasi youths murdered. Adivasi women sexually assaulted by police and SS workers at Talasari.
• Late 1990s SS-BJP goverment summarily withdraws over 1,100 cases of atrocities against Dalits in Marathwada.

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The Who-Said-What Nil Nisi Bonum Test

It’s a sight, ‘progressives’ adding to Thackeray’s iconisation

DILEEP PADGAONKAR

The mammoth size of the crowd of mourners who congregated at Shivaji Park in Mumbai last Sunday to bid a final adieu to Bal Thackeray foxed many of his long-time critics. They had assumed that, in his waning years, the Shiv Sena chieftain had become a pale and tragic shadow of his former, feisty self and was therefore a figure of no consequence. The assumption was well founded. A series of political setbacks and personal tragedies, followed by age-related illnesses, had taken their toll.

In his last video address, Thackeray appealed to the Sainiks to “take care” of his anointed heirs—son Uddhav and grandson Aditya—once he exited the scene. It was a pitiable sight: the patriarch, who once held his audience in thrall with his vitriolic oratory, now appeared to be frail and exhausted as he gasped for breath while he searched for the right words. The critics had therefore concluded that he was well and truly a spent force.

But by the time the funeral ended, the critics began to sing a different tune. The presence of lakhs of people, as well as that of political leaders from several parties, corporate heads and leading film stars, they acknowledged, contained a message about Thackeray’s enduring appeal, which had thus far eluded them. It related partly to his great capacity to strike bonds of friendship even with his rivals in the spheres of politics, the media, sports and cinema. He castigated them in the most acerbic terms in his public speeches, but in private, treated them with much warmth and courtesy.

Partly, too, the critics argued, Thackeray’s candour—a marked penchant to always call a spade a bloody shovel—set him apart from politicians who can rarely, if ever, mean what they say or say what they mean. The Sena patriarch’s forthrightness, often expressed in a language that bordered on the obscene, outraged his adversaries, embarrassed his allies and compelled his party leaders to squirm in their seats. But, the neo-converts claimed, it was music to the ears of his followers. They revelled in every sentence he uttered for, in their reckoning, Thackeray dared to articulate their very own sentiments.

Neo-converts to the Thackeray brand failed or refused to see the real reasons why the Marathi manoos was left behind. It was easier to see him as building marathi pride.

These were sentiments of a grievous hurt: after great sacrifices, the Marathi people had got a state of their own, but the state had failed to address their concerns and aspirations. The insecurities of the middle- and lower-middle-class Maharashtrians, who constituted the base of the Shiv Sena along with the lumpen proletariat, hardened to a point where they felt marginalised with no hope of ever catching up with “outsiders”: south Indians, Marwaris and Gujaratis, to begin with, and later Muslims and Biharis. The “outsiders”, they felt, denied them jobs, bought over their properties and forced them to relocate in distant suburbs, engaged in criminal activities, carved a political space for themselves at their expense, disdained their language and culture and, overall, reduced them to the status of second-class citizens on their home turf.

The neo-converts to identity politics went on to assert that throughout his public life Thackeray exploited these insecurities with such consummate skill that an average Maharashtrian readily looked the other way when he promoted his political agenda with a brazen, often callous, disregard for constitutional niceties. They knew that the Sena patriarch’s single obsession was to instil a sense of pride in the Marathi manoos, to seek his social and economic advancement and to give him the confidence to face the dreaded “outsiders” with courage and fortitude.

It is these virtues that Thackeray’s once-strident critics extolled as they witnessed the scenes at Shivaji Park. The thought did not cross their minds that the grouses of the Maharashtrians had little to do with the malignant “outsiders”. If few of them were at the commanding heights of trade and commerce, the all-India civil services, the English media, Bollywood, PSUs, the armed forces, the academic world or even the cultural one at the pan-India level, the reasons had to be sought in their own character and attitude and in the neglect of quality education in the state.

The neo-converts couldn’t summon the nerve to admit that Maharashtrians lacked—or had failed to exhibit—the entrepreneurial skills of the Gujaratis, Marwaris, Kutchis, Jains, Sindhis and Parsis; that they didn’t venture out of their towns and cities to earn a livelihood in distant states as south Indians, Punjabis, north Indian Hindus and Muslims and the bhadralok Bengalis did with gusto; that their innately cautious, understated nature did not allow them to engage in the highly competitive market of arts and ideas.

The neo-converts to identity politics also chose to ignore two other factors. Few, if any, thought it fit to point to the terrible cost Maharashtra had to pay for Thackeray’s brand of politics: a lethal mix of regional chauvinism, communalism and rank opportunism. Its victims weren’t heard in TV studio discussions or in the columns of newspapers. Nor was another, younger breed of Maharashtrians, who are carving a niche for themselves in just about every field, ranging from food and fashion to scholarship, business, media and the arts. They don’t suffer from a sense of victimhood. It is therefore a matter of time before the newly minted admirers of Bal Thackeray—most of them “progressives”—are forced to eat their words.

That time may indeed have come much sooner than any of them would have anticipated. Even as the mammoth crowd had begun to disperse from Shivaji Park, a group of Shiv Sainiks flexed their muscles in Palghar. They forced a 21-year old woman, Shaheen Dhada, to tender an apology for a comment she had posted on her Facebook page. Her crime? She had raised questions about how and why Mumbai had shut down in the wake of Thackeray’s death—without naming him once. This perfectly innocuous comment had riled the Sainiks for, in their eyes, Shaheen, like her friend, Rini Srinivasan, who had endorsed the comment, had insulted their leader. After some reluctance, Shaheen did post an apology on her Facebook page, but that brought her no respite.

The Sainiks vandalised a hospital run by her uncle and roughed up staff and patients alike. Late that night, the police, instead of hunting for the vandals, took the two young women in custody and next morning pressed charges against them for “outraging religious feelings”. The charges were subsequently whittled down and the women were released on bail. Such was the nation-wide outcry against the conduct of both, the Sainiks and the police, that the state government was compelled to order an inquiry.

But their reputation was in tatters: the former, because they had demonstrated how they proposed to uphold the legacy of Thackeray; and the latter, for making it obvious that, faced with the wrath of the Sainiks, their spine was akin to the spine of an eel. They had shown this propensity to kowtow to the Sena time and again in the past. Not once did they seriously press charges against Thackeray for his inflammatory speeches against “Madrasis”, Muslims, Biharis and against artists, writers, film stars and journalists who had questioned his policies and tactics. Will the recent adherents of the Shiv Sena patriarch’s brand of identity politics now run for cover? This is far from certain. No long-time practitioner of a faith—religious or secular—can hope to match the zeal of a neo-convert to sap the foundations of the republic.

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Ashis Nandy on Thackeray - 'He may have believed in nothing'

It is not my job to pay tributes to dead politicians, nor is it to do a hatchet job on them. I have learnt to look at human beings without being terribly judgemental, since I still retain something of my clinical training. Therefore, I shall look at Bal Thackeray from a distance. He was a product of a period of Indian politics during which his kind thrived. It was the time when leaders like Datta Samant emerged but, unlike him, Thackeray’s instinct for survival was stronger and he negotiated the world of Indian politics with greater skill despite his—and this is a gross understatement—many angularities.




Actually, Thackeray believed in nothing. Many people think he believed in Hindutva, something that he exploited very successfully to further his career, but it perhaps did not mean anything at all to him. He spewed hatred against Hindus liberally—and frequently. When they were not the south Indians, they were the Gujaratis and the Marwaris and, later in his life, the migrants from UP and Bihar. It would be wrong to presume that Balasaheb spoke for the Hindus; he only spoke up for those who supported him. Chameleon-like, he changed colours and always looked ready for different occasions. It is being said that he cemented Marathi identity, but even that is doubtful. Marathi identity was something already there; it did not have to be reinforced by Thackeray. Balasaheb only took advantage of its existence and rode its crest to political power.



The glowing tributes that have poured in for Thackeray are not easy to explain at short notice. We shall have to wait to assess their resilience. Indians avoid speaking ill of the dead. A careful enumeration might reveal some day that Thackeray’s victims among the Marathi people, for whom he reportedly toiled all his life, were more numerous than Ajmal Kasab’s (whose hanging has prompted not lamentation, but jubilation). It is probable that Thackeray’s legacy of violence has been overlooked as most of his victims have come from the bottom strata of society, whose deaths do not make much of a difference to a media-exposed public.



After saying all this, I must hasten to add that there is in Thackeray another trait that may explain the eulogies he has received from various quarters. One can accuse him of having run a criminal enterprise, but the political culture of it did not seem criminal because there was an element of juvenile delinquency in it. The use of the term juvenile is deliberate; there was something innocent about his project, something that reminded one of the playfulness of a teenager. What would have otherwise looked like a criminal enterprise ended up looking like the forgiveable naughtiness of a teenager. For many, he was always playing a game, he made it clear to his galaxy of friends and followers, in Mario Puzo style.



In him, there was a little bit of playacting. Not surprisingly, his circle of friends included people from different religious, educational and linguistic backgrounds. Not only that, they even included those who opposed every canon of the different ideologies he has espoused in his entire political life. How else can one explain the friendship between R.K. Laxman, a classical liberal (and a south Indian!), and Thackeray? He reportedly even called him up days before he died just so that he could hear his voice once. Their relationship was described as ‘apolitical’, and it endorses what I said.



This is why I say he believed in nothing. There was something iconoclastic about him. He cared two hoots for ideologies. He saw through the hypocrisy of ideologies that political leaders employ on the national scene. For him, politics was just a game and he beat others at it. He didn’t even take himself as seriously as many would like to believe. People who knew him reasonably well probably suspected in their hearts that he never believed in any of what he said publicly. I think their tributes discounted the element of violence, given that there was something juvenile about his political enterprise. They would rather remember it as something slightly naughty.

A Tribute To M A Khan

By Vidya Bhushan Rawat

03 February, 2007
Countercurrents.org

He was a mobile Information Centre of Sonbhadra district in eastern part of Uttar-Pradesh, whose work during the past thirty years was utilized by those who do not have time to visit the villages and follow up the stories after they started. M.A.Khan was always cheerful related to his work, his love for the Adivasis and his conviction against the child labour, brought him close touch of the ground reality. His only concern was that 'agencies outside Sonbhadra were using the ignorance and poverty of the poor people for their own purposes and not with an aim to lift the tribals and end poverty which they can very much do. Once the project was over, these agencies left the tribal for their own good.' For the past few years, Khan in his every interaction with me displayed his disappointment of how the international donor agencies find their people and agencies in these regions but never found Khan and his Chaupal which had been fairly active in the region.

In a two days human rights consultation in Delhi, when I was informing a friend about Khan and his impeccable credentials for fighting the rights of the common man in Sonbhadra district, a shocking news was revealed by another friend that M.A.Khan passed away, a day before, on 27th of January 2007, in Varanasi. I was dumb and shocked to hear this. Just a fortnight ago, I spoke to him on his mobile when he told me that Doctors have found symptoms of cancer in him and that he wish to be transferred to AIIMS in Delhi. That time, the first thought in my mind was that this news would be wrong and hence I said ' Khan Saheb, you will get well soon. AIIMS is not the same as it used to be. If people like you are here who speak for the poor Dalits and marginalized, I do not know whether the doctors who do politics and not the treatment, would treat you well or not.'

M.A.Khan was quintessentially a secular activist with strong left leaning. He was not fit in the glamour world of NGOs where you are fixed in certain style of format and report as per it. Though, his documentation of events, custodial deaths, cases of torture of Adivasis and forest dwellers in Sonbhadra would remain unparallel. At a time, when NGOs masquerading to be human rights organization splash information with the purpose of publicity and not to really help the poor, Khan was refreshingly different with his people centric approach. He would walk down the villages, record the narratives of the victims and finally take them to the related authorities in the district and even file petition in the court. In fact, he had formed a group of lawyers in Sonbhadra who used to take such cases of illegal detentions of the tribal in the name of naxalism.

Born in 1946 in a Zamindar family of Robertsganj, Khan went to Deoband to earn a degree in Fazil and then he completed his masters. He worked very hard during the 1967 famine in the region. In 1968 he joined Communist Party of India and started Pragatisheel Kisan Manch (progressive farmer's forum). He continued to travel around the villages and help the needy. In 1985 he founded Jan Sewa Kendra to assist the poor of his region.
It was his concern about the growing landless situation in Sonbhadra that he traveled around 500 villages of his district to understand the condition and found that tribal were living in utter misery. Their land being occupied by others and that they did not have two-time meal to eat. He felt that they lacked information regarding their rights. He found that the ignorance of the people was the biggest obstacle in their development and the officers were misusing it. In fact, one of his candid remarks was that despite huge funds flowing to NGOs in Sonbhadra and Varanasi, the condition of the poor and their rights remain the same. He would laugh and say that the NGOs have not come to remove the poverty of the people but their own poverty. 'Chaupal', a village initiative to discuss and resolve their problem by the villagers took shape during this period. He would form a team of 8 members in every village who would discuss their issues and carry the information to the central office in Robertsganj. Chaupal worked in 80 villages. Khan Saheb new it very well that it was difficult to run an organization without resources. Often, the big fishes would catch the members of Chaupal for their own purposes. He started getting depressed because of the growing commercialization of the civil society movement where the powerful elite had gathered all the NGOs in the name of 'poor'. In the region of eastern Uttar-Pradesh where dirty tricks among the NGOs are the best practices, where NGOs are run by powerful connections and castes, Khan remain a grounded man. Very much down trodden who with the help of a few committed lawyers tried to do help the tribal.

Despite hailing from a Zamaindar family, Khan did not have much land and property at the end. He had a small typewriter where he would type reports of malfunctioning of the government department. If a tribal girl or woman would come to him, he would type their application and go along with them to submit it to the relevant authorities. He would nicely take a copy of the same in his file. And this was his regular practice. The habit resulted in one of the best documentation, which was hardly recognized and which remain thoroughly unpaid, that I had ever seen. It was this information, which proved volatile for police once upon a time and his office was burnt and valuable information got lost. Nevertheless, after that, he started working from him home and still had huge piles of files, meticulously maintained in his drawer.

For me he was a great source of information. He would send his well-written reports on issues as important as custodial deaths, National Rural Employment Guarantee programme, land and forest issues to be send to national and international agencies for lobbying. He felt betrayed that his work was not recognized by the international community leave along the donor agencies who have their own criteria for support.

Apart from sending these reports, which Khan was really very committed, the thing, which was very admirable about him, was his concern for the natural resources of the people and how they lost it to big companies and local feudal elements! His stories, many of which remain unpublished would be treasure to learn how the state and its apparatus have sucked the blood of tribal over the year. He had detailed information about how forest department captured the land of the tribal and how the NGOs from outside did not have enough information about it and they flash information and leave the place making the lives of the tribal more vulnerable to exploitation. I had promised to him to get them published in future. In fact, I introduced him to Hum Dalit, a monthly journal, which regularly published his well thought out articles.

I still remember the day when the villagers had come to protest in front of the district collector and all of them showed the food product they had been eating. The district Magistrate did not turn up but send his deputy and several forest officials. Seeing the tribal displaying their food produce the SDM became angry and said ' you sale our poverty abroad. You have no business do that. Go back.' The forest department officers were equally angry and blamed Khan that he was responsible for misguiding them, a charge which Khan openly denied. Khan stood by the people all the time.

Being a local citizen of Sonbhadra, his house was always open for the tribal and Dalits of the region. Women would come to his house, get their work done and go back satisfying. In fact, for many of them, he was their father, who had performed the 'kanyadaan' during the marriage.

Once, I asked him why doesn't he work on the 'communal issues'. As usual he said ' I always feel my heart with the Adivasis of Sonbhadra. I never feel that I am different from them. They have been cheated by the regularly. The government has done very little for them. If they retaliate they are charged with being Naxalites and cases are filed against them.' In fact one of the work that Khan did was to fight for a young 12 years old boy who was charged under POTA. This is tragic how police behave. Sonbhadra district is notorious for police highhandedness since they are unable to take on the Naxal, they exploit the helpless villagers.

It was therefore not surprising that the man who was arrested many time as well as whose office was burnt by the police in the name of alleged link with naxalites, did not find any favor from the donor agencies in their work for the region.

He would always say that the village needs to connect with international community. The idea of his Chaupal was to flood the authorities with complaints and information about the villages and the people and their problems. He would always ask me that internet and computers should linked to village and they would empower the poor people and reduce their dependency others to write letters for them as well as it will also enable the international community to see things at their own rather then being shown.

M A Khan remains simple all through his life. He was an anguished man that he could not communicate and write in English language and felt that it was the reason why people like him remain outside the net of those who matter. While, not many have had opportunity to hear him internationally, for the thousands of tribal people, he was one of their own, very own father figure, who went out of his way to help them and gave them a sense of dignity and honour. Like a lone man struggling in utterly difficult circumstances, he left a legacy of his work but no second rank leadership since he himself remained penniless till his end, struggling to get resources for his medication. That is the biggest irony of those work in the grassroots that they work for all and at the end they remain aloof from the world. None care to listen their problems and perhaps very few to bother that a committed man is no more. Since nobody care to inquire about each other particularly those come from not powerful families, there remain no news about them. It is tragic and it should end. The best tribute to MA Khan would be to strengthen the ideas that he gave and carry on his message of Chaupal so that the rural poor is saved from the a contemptuous bureaucracy as well as local middlemen who thrive on their ignorance.