I am a master in India

Chapter 407 Rural Areas
It was early 98, and the national elections were drawing ever closer, and the whole of India seemed to be in an uproar.

As a "kingmaker," Uttar Pradesh is naturally a battleground for various political parties.

With politicians frequently appearing in the media, the Progressive Party, not wanting to be left out, began to venture deeper into the heart of Uttar Pradesh.

With Dwaram as a traitor, the Progressive Party can easily penetrate into local grassroots communities.

Indian farmers live a very hard life, and they themselves know that farming is not enough to make a living.

Even if they don't commit suicide because of their heavy debts, they don't see any future.

They continue farming not because of tradition, but because their situation might be worse if they looked for other ways to make a living.

For them, finding another way to make a living is nothing more than joining the growing ranks of migrant workers, traveling back and forth between urban and rural areas, doing monotonous temporary jobs, and earning meager wages.

Dwaram was taking Muna to a village called Kazi, where the villagers had participated in the last Red Sorghum demonstration.

The two drove west from Lucknow along a highway lined with restaurants and shops.

Finally, when the city disappeared from sight, they saw another, even more blurred scene.

Scattered across the open land are pharmaceutical factories, each separated from the outside world by square walls.

These pharmaceutical factories are nothing more than isolated areas made up of brick walls, iron gates, and security personnel.

In addition, there are several large construction sites where workers are mixing cement, painting walls, and busy building apartment buildings that are already taking shape.

Muna's dilapidated Maruti bumped violently uphill because the road was littered with trash and debris.

He had just been provided with an ambassador car a few years ago, but he was reluctant to drive it, especially to rural areas like Kazi.

After the car went downhill, it entered a valley. There were clusters of houses by the roadside, and behind the houses was a continuous stretch of flat land that extended all the way to a small hill.

The farmer Dwaram was looking for wasn't home, but Dwaram knew where to look and led Muna to a rugged, rocky area behind the house.

He stopped by a stream, which was shallow and narrow, almost a ribbon, and shimmered with a greenish light.

That wasn't the natural green of nature, but a vivid, somewhat eerie green.

He said this used to be a canal that transported clean water, and this land used to be covered with crops and farmland.

There was another person herding sheep nearby who came over when he heard Dwaram's voice.

The man said he used to grow rice here, but the land became barren, so he had to make a living by herding sheep.

The two followed the stream and climbed the small hill they had seen earlier on the way.

When they reached the top of the mountain, Muna smelled a stench that made her eyes and nose sting.

Below them was a lake bubbling with brownish water. Although they weren't close to the lake, the stench was so strong that it felt like standing next to a giant vat of sulfuric acid.

Dewaram pointed to the factories on the other side of the lake for Muna to see; it was the wastewater discharged from these factories that polluted the entire area.

Although Uttar Pradesh is poor, it still has some industrial base.

There are five traditional heavy industrial cities alone. Near Lucknow, there are numerous pharmaceutical companies.

India's patent laws encourage the production of generic drugs, especially given the booming drug smuggling trade in the last two years, which has led to the establishment of numerous pharmaceutical factories.

However, behind the glamorous trade volume of generic drugs lies the beginning of suffering in rural areas.

The two came down from the mountain, and Muna and Dewaram stood by the roadside chatting with the villagers.

Some came on foot, others on motorcycles. People liked Dwaram because he had been with them from the beginning, fighting alongside them against the factory that was harming them.

The villagers sued the polluting factory, but ultimately lost the case.

They had protested, but were brutally beaten by thugs hired by the factory.

They also seized control of a truck that was dumping garbage there, but the police arrested them but released the driver.

They even asked the government to stop the pollution, but the National Pollution Control Committee said that the area was not polluted.

So the villagers, regardless of religion, class, or wealth, gathered together and formed a united front. But their village chief was bribed by those companies and then murdered by another competitor.

Fifteen years ago, people here could grow rice, but now they can't grow anything.

Some people started grazing livestock, while others began selling off some of their land.

Others went to the other side of the mountain to cultivate red sorghum, a drought-resistant crop that does not require irrigation from polluted lake water.

However, the cultivation of red sorghum has not been smooth. The last incident involving the seed merchant almost led to the destruction of the villagers' homes.

Some people see no hope and want to escape, but they can't bring themselves to do it.

Because their family has lived on this land called Kazi for 500 years, and even the polluted lake is 400 years old.

This lake once covered forty acres, and there are still ruins of hunting lodges on its shores. In the past, princes would come here to hunt deer.

Just as they were talking, a series of bombing sounds came, shaking the ground beneath their feet.

The sound came from a quarry that was built privately five or six years ago without government approval. Yellow trucks loaded with stones would pass by them from time to time, and a little boy covered in dust would always sit next to the driver.

After strolling around the village, Dwaram took Muna to visit his home. It was crowded and noisy, and Muna barely remembered a few names.

They were all former members of the Communist Party, including shop owners, lawyers, waiters, and housewives. They all seemed to have gained an aura of prestige because of their respective political activities.

Muna also met Godavari, Dwaram's wife, a beautiful woman with slightly dark skin and a limp. She was a teacher at the school and also her husband's assistant.

While drinking tea, Dwaram told Muna about the old Khedrup Party, and the others chimed in with their own comments.

In their earlier years, their party was called the New Democratic Party, a true left-wing faction and one of the many Naxal factions that engaged in underground work.

Those were dark days, when almost every major political party in India called for the extermination of the Chama-e-kipchak party.

Politicians in the city were particularly hostile to the Dictatorship, and they ordered the police to assassinate a large number of Dictatorship members.

To save their lives, many people either fled to distant lands or left their political parties and went into hiding.

It wasn't until the 90s that the government allowed them to operate publicly.

But after such a long period of persecution, there was no longer any "life-splitting party," and most people went back to being ordinary citizens.

Dwaram now only controls the agricultural workers' union in the Herdoy region as a leftist.

"Unfortunately, after twenty years of suppression, even the original armed forces have disbanded."

"You even have your own armed forces?" Muna asked in surprise.

“It wasn’t unusual back then; if you didn’t have a gun, you were doomed. We had to protect ourselves, or we would be wiped out by the so-called upper-class mob.”

"Upper-class mobs? Not police?"

“Hey, back then we were preparing to redistribute land in the countryside, and the upper-class farmers hated us more than the police,” Dwaram laughed.

Muna was stunned; even he hadn't considered such a radical policy.

In India, discussing land redistribution is no different from being eager to see Shiva.

He was even curious about how Dwaram had survived.

“Are those upper-class peasants the landlords here?” he asked.

“They started out as farmers, but they were better at exploiting people and gradually became the upper class in the countryside. I’ll take you to meet them another day.”

"So what are you doing now? That agricultural workers' union."

“Help them solve their problems.” Dwaram tilted his head toward the others in the room.

People started to speak up, saying they would organize women to make hand-rolled cigarettes and try to protect farmers who were in trouble because they had borrowed money from private lenders.

“Those moneylenders are basically in the gold and jewelry business,” Dwaram said. “If you borrow 1000 rupees, you have to pay back 2000 after 12 months. We try to negotiate the interest with them, but we don’t always succeed.”

Muna wrote down these questions one by one, as this would be a shortcut for the Progressive Party to penetrate the grassroots.

Surprisingly, Dwaram, a Dalit farmer, appeared confident and polite.

He told Muna that if she wanted to really understand how the farmers here lived, she should go and see the district government.

He said that as soon as the government stopped public bank lending programs, someone else came out to lend money.

The dissolution of the State Agriculture Office led to a surplus of seed merchants who acted as intermediaries.

The state-owned seed development companies that used to buy seeds from farmers at reasonable prices are now just shells of their former selves; their warehouses have been abandoned and their offices are empty.

“Loans and seed companies are key,” Muna concluded.

"Yes, solving these two problems will guarantee the farmers' survival."

“It’s not too difficult,” Muna nodded.

"What?" Dvalam was stunned.

“We would be better off organizing a rally to hear their voices before announcing the Progressive Party’s next policy.”

"You already have an idea?"

"The loan issue can only be addressed through the Ministry of Finance, where I happen to have some connections. The seed company can be restored to state ownership, or we can find a reliable private enterprise; that shouldn't be difficult either."

"Oh!" Dwaram realized then that the person standing in front of him was not an ordinary person, but the Minister of Industry of Uttar Pradesh.

The other person's age and simple appearance deceived him; he looked like an ordinary rural youth.

In Muna's view, the agricultural problems in Kazi village were nothing serious.

They hadn't seen what the eastern countryside used to be like; the village of Kana is a living example, if you don't go too far.

A third of the people there don't live to adulthood; every child who grows up is a lucky one.

But that was in the past. The East is now undergoing a fundamental transformation.

(End of this chapter)