Voting against a goddess

There is no road to Barlamunda, a remote tribal village in Orissa’s Koraput district that has no electricity and no running water.

Its residents have not seen their MLA since he last came asking for votes in 2004. Yet the voters here, who total about 400 now, have chosen the Congress in every election.

They believe voting for the party of Indira Gandhi brings them good luck.

“Indira Maiyya brought us rains. Every time we voted for her, we had good rains,” says Kambelu Katreka (65), a one-time farm labourer.

Politicians in Orissa have long thrived on the ignorance of naïve tribals like Katreka, who make up about a quarter of the state’s electorate.

The Congress has never lost the Lok Sabha seat in Koraput, because “it’s Indira’s party and it’s the only party we know,” says Katreka. Even today, Congress workers carry her portrait when they go around canvassing. Many of the tribals think she’s still alive.

“In many villages, the portraits are put up at prominent places till voting day. People gather to garland the pictures and place incense sticks around them, just as if she were a goddess,” says social worker Ranjit Pangi.

This despite the fact that the party has done little for the region — 80 per cent of the people here live below the poverty line, only 36 per cent are literate and the district has the country’s highest infant mortality rate: 125 of every 1,000 children born here die within a year.

Now, the unquestioning loyalty is slowly giving way to discontent and disillusionment, as more tribals gain access to cable TV and cellphones.

“It has been more than 15 years since we were promised a road,” says Ingu Maleka, one of only three people from Barlamunda’s population of 700 to have made it to high school.

Though village roads supply most of the jobs promised under the National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme, in this village, where there is no work after the winter harvest, the scheme is missing.

“This year, some villagers managed to get about four weeks of employment under NREGS — working on a road in another village,” says Maleka, who runs the mid-day meal program at Barlamunda’s only primary school.

When the government school came up two years ago, villagers were happy because their malnourished children could now get a free meal.

The meal is still available, but not the education. The school’s teachers — there are only two — rarely turn up.

Repeated complaints have yielded no results. “Maybe if we stop voting, they will start listening,” says Maleka.

That’s precisely what Naxalites, whose influence is growing in the region, want.

Malana Pidika, a 25-year-old Congress worker in nearby Nilabadi village, acknowledges that the Naxals’ appeals are no longer going unheard.

“It’s a matter of time before the Congress loses its hold ,” he says. “Unless we change, and change in every way.”