No PWD inroads in mafia land

Rajesh N Singh

[ 13 Nov, 2006 0300hrs IST TIMES NEWS NETWORK ]

LUCKNOW: The shadow of the mafia over PWD contracts in east UP has severely hampered the infrastructural growth of eastern Uttar Pradesh.

A majority of contracts for development projects, including World Bank-aided works, simply don't see the light of the day in this crime-prone region because the quoted cost far exceeds the estimated cost. Reason: Contractors have to include the 'mafia tax' in each of the bids.

The cost quoted by contractors in this region is almost 40 to 50 per cent higher than the estimated cost.

Interestingly, same contractors keep their bids approximately equal to or less than the estimated cost for the same nature of work in the central or western parts of the state.

The mafia menace is so rampant that most of the districts in the region including Basti, Gorakhpur, Maharajganj, Deoria, Ballia, Azamgarh, Jaunpur, Chandauli, Ghazipur, Mau and Varanasi witness mafia-turned politicians dictating terms in government contracts.

"Politicians like Hari Shankar Tewari, who is also a minister, Mukhtar Ansari, Dhananjay Singh, Chulbul Singh, Akhilesh Singh (all gangsters cum legislators) rule the roost in their respective areas. Each contract would need their blessings," confided a senior PWD official.

Talking to TOI, principal secretary, PWD, Satish Kumar Agarwal admitted," Such elements were not allowing contractors to work without fear of coercion." He however refused to identify the mafia-turned politicians realising 'mafia tax' from the contractors.

He said that the projects which are in the eastern UP areas, the department is not getting the right of kind of people to place a bid.

"In some cases the bids are exorbitant and as high as 40 to 50 per cent above the estimated cost," said Agarwal. Citing an example, he said that for Deoria-Ballia World Bank-aided state road project, the bid was as high as 44 per cent of the estimated cost

DISCOVER YOUR ROOTS : Tracing century-old roots for NRIs’ family tree

UP Tourism Dept’s project helps descendants of immigrant workers trace surviving relatives; Ballia adopted as pilot project.
Surendra Pratap Singh

Lucknow, April 29: IT is a search for long lost roots — a journey which goes back to over a century. Between 1900-1911, thousands of people from various districts of Uttar Pradesh were shipped by the ruling British to serve as bonded labourers across the globe. Today, their descendants, most of whom are now well-to-do Non-Resident Indians (NRIs), are trying to trace their roots with the help of the UP Tourism Department.

The present generation of these NRIs are trying to track the whereabouts of their surviving relatives. In a recent breakthrough, two were successful in tracing their families in Jaunpur and Azamgarh.

Although the department initiated the project, ‘‘Discover your Roots’’, in 2000, it only received a boost last year. This year, the search has received a budgetary allocation of Rs 7 lakh from the State Government. Another proposal for Rs 30 lakh is lying with the Centre. All interested NRIs can register under scheme by paying a fee of US$ 100.

Nikhil Chandra, joint MD, UP Tourism Corporation, said it has been an uphill task so far. ‘‘As per the instructions of the Government of India, we have been searching for the families of 56 people who migrated from Ballia. Of these, eight families have been found so far,’’ he said.
‘‘Information on 38 districts has been collected so far. The names and addresses of 10,000 people who went as indentured labourers have been compiled,’’ said R R Saxena, project manager of Discover Your Roots.

The district of Ballia has been undertaken as the pilot project. ‘‘An office has been set up in Ballia with two field supervisors, who are engaged in visiting villages to collect the necessary information,’’ he said.

Five other districts — Varanasi, Jaunpur, Ghazipur, Faizabad and Azamgarh — will also be taken up as part of the pilot project. The maximum number of immigrants was found to be from these six districts. The details of villagers who have been successfully traced will be put up on the department’s website.

Officers involved in the search revealed how their task was made more difficult by villagers’ unwillingness to divulge information. They feared that the NRIs would return to ask for their share of property.

On a district level, officials are scanning old land records, talking to old people belonging to the same caste as the immigrant, checking ration cards, and studying birth and death registration certificates. Even old folk songs are being studied to look for some names.

Seventy colonial immigration registers have been dug out from the Lucknow archives. The pothis (record books) on the ghats of Haridwar, Varanasi, Gaya, Badrinath, Dwarkadham and Pushkar are also being scanned. These pothis contain the names of people who perfomed pind daan (prayers for dead relatives) or other religious functions, along with their addresses too.
Efforts are also on to study the immigration lists (1917-1978) at the Mahatma Gandhi Institute in Mauritius.

The whole project has been divided into three phases. In the first phase, information on the immigrants will be collected. This preliminary information will then be sent to the related NRIs, along with an invitation to visit their ancestral place.

In the second phase, a packaged tour for the NRI will be organised to his village. This will include fooding, lodging and conveyance.

And in the third, the tourism department will facilitate any construction activity or other developmental work that the NRI may want to undertake at his village.

Girmitias to NRIs
FROM 1900-1911, the British got thousands of Indians to sign agreements undertaking to work in foreign countries under the then British empire. They were promised a good life, job opportunities and a chance to make more money.

These people, most of whom belonged to Ballia, Gonda, Basti, Azamgarh, Rae Bareli, Gorakhpur and Bahraich districts of Eastern Uttar Pradesh, were packed into three ships. Some men were alone, while others were accompanied by their families.

The living conditions on board the ships were bad. Even the rations were inadequate. Many died during the journey. Those who survived were dumped in Mauritius, Surinam, Fiji and other neighbouring areas to work as bonded labourers.

They came to be known as ‘‘Girmitias’’, a distortion of the word ‘‘agreement’’. Because, whenever they were questioned, these Indian immigrants used to answer that they were there ‘‘on agreement’’.

Over the years, the immigrants became affluent through sheer hard work. And most of their descendants are now well-off NRIs.

Capturing roots on frames

25-year-old unfolds her family's 19th Century flight from India and subsequent struggle in a 90-minute documentary film

Name: Shundell Prasad.

Age: 25 years.

Place of birth: British Guyana.

Profession: Documentary filmmaker.

This young woman fled Guyana, grew up in New York and studied at the Film School, New York University. Since childhood -- when she was told of her Indian origin -- she wanted to know where she was born and why she was not in India.

This search for her roots made her go about directing and producing a documentary film in the first-person narrative. It begins in Queens, New York, goes to the sweltering sugarcane fields of British Guyana where her family from India was taken as servants for the British Empire. From New York to British Guyana and Kolkata, the documentary unfolds.

"Uncovering the truth about one's lost history can be painful. This is my family's story of displacement, struggle and survival and my attempt at rediscovery. I managed to trace my forefather's 19th century ship records from Guyana's record room. They became my navigational map back to India," Shundell says.The filmmaker says she has shot 75 digital hours in Bihar and East Uttar Pradesh -- two areas that witnessed major scenes for Indian uprising, specifically the Sepoy Mutiny of 1857. In Bihar, she found distant relatives of her mother in remote Muzaffarpur. In Azamgarh, Uttar Pradesh, she traced her father's relatives.

"It was stranger than fiction to come face to face with my relatives who live in dire poverty. It was here that I realised how removed I had become", she says. The documentary is in the post-production stages and in a few weeks, she will have a 90-minute product for the world to see. She is busy trying to show glimpses to people who matter and is also working to enter her film in film festivals.