As you start walking into this village, soft powder of dust raises from the ground. An election campaign vehicle screeches and comes to a halt near the culvert. Its front wheels are simply stuck in a gully made and left behind by pouring rains in the last season. There is a symbol, apparently belonging to the ruling party in the state government, stuck to the banner on the jeep. A lean lad around 18 jumps out the troubled vehicle to the driver. He smiles and you do return. He spins monologue looking at you. ‘You seem to be an educated fellow, for what have you come so far. So deep?’ You manage to evade the issue and ask back ‘what does your candidate propose t do here if he is elected?’ ‘God knows, what he will. I belong to Mechal, I failed several times, tenth class, and do I look it?’

‘No you don’t’. I assure him although unsure if I am supposed to know how a tenth grade failed youth would look like. ( Medchal is a reasonable town in Medak district of Andhra Pradesh)

His name is Jagadish. He does this canvassing job pretty well. In return he gets tea, snacks, sometimes Pulau[1] and these jeep rides. He gets some money too. Its fun for him distributing pamphlets and shouting aloud while other boys that he picked up enroute- friends as he would call –join the chorus. It is pity, there’s hardly a person in this hamlet who could read aloud the printed material brought by him. Those few who can read are busy else where.

Children enjoy running after the jeep and collecting as many coloured pamphlets as they can. They start fighting amongst themselves over these collections and start all over again trying to maximize their souvenirs. The jeep leaves to an unknown destination. At least unknown to the children. They run after it for sometime. Tired, yet happy, they return to the hamlet.

their dawns and their dusks

It is interesting to note that sun rises in the east even in this part of the parched earth. Ceaselessly life begins. The little child, who squats on his to defecate, does not notice a hungry dog oozing saliva behind. He sees my Camera moving closer. He starts to cry. The dog growls and then snarls. The child runs away. It dawned on me then, that this was the morning serenity, that I had no right to disturb. Of course I had no photograph.

At every open space in the by lanes are pits dug up, where the cow dung is stored I saw some young lasses busy dumping dung into these pits, with their otherwise clean hands. There is a community radio set in this village that started releasing agricultural bulletin. But of course those who farm and should hear these bulletins have left for work already. I confirmed later that all these broadcasts die unheard.

I took a way that brought me back to the place where I started in spite of doing a criss-cross over the third lane from the left. As the day was already born, one expects it movements. Cattle white, red, patchy, brown, dark grey, emaciated, fat, horn broken buffaloes pour out of sheds and amble away with contemptuous indifference. The geese started cackling and desperately increase their sounds hoping that the bigger animals could hear them and of course they do not wish to trespass the cattle.

Children with shrill voices, some ragged clothes, and parched skin with a stick each are diverting these animals to the grounds to graze, the whole day. Children any way between 8 and 12, innocent with sparkling teeth and running noses, may know that others in their age group elsewhere in the world go to schools, have dresses pressed neatly and eat a cocoa toffee occasionally.

Nine year old Kisna likes school and play. While cattle graze, he has time enough to play with others like him. But no school. Scholl is something he misses. Kisna like many others is forced to eke his livelihood- a whole nation striving to make his child hood joyful? He never heard of that. It is of no consequence to him.

I remember Indian constitution talking about free education to children less than fourteen years of age, but like Kisna, the beneficiaries do not and can not avail this facility fully due to a number of economic issues that confront their households.

‘Since grand father’s times, issues have been like this. My father couldn’t earn enough to feed us all and to employ labour to get the cattle to graze. He would toil all day long. My mother would do the same and if one day if either of them fell sick, we would have barely anything to eat. So where does the question of my education figure in? Retorts 82 year old man who still labours chipping wood into bark for fuel. 1979 is the year of the child. That meant nothing really to many rural children. At least it appeared as nothing. These children have miles to go. I wasn’t sure that dawn, if these children had the company of optimistic and committed people to work with and to learn from.

I saw that choices were limited- women to cook, make cow dung cakes – dry them and sell them as fuel or use them as fuel, bake bread, look after newly born and join if they can their husbands as farm labour. Little children, mothers always left them in a hammock in the shade of a tree, while they were either de weeding or harvesting crops.

Men. Men too had fewer choices; at least that is what I thought as an urbanite visiting this hamlet. To go and get, divide the little fortune between home need and vices, beat up their females should they ask for more. But children they were there. ‘What about them? You ask. Yes what about them. I don’t know.

Thanks to Gandhi the Mahatma, and later the Congress raj, very village has a school. Not hamlets. But Villages. Its hard time getting these school master’s to work. Their motivations are elsewhere. Firstly as a single teacher he commutes a great distance and he comes when he wishes. It could be a couple of hours late or may not come that day.

Children wait near the school room and wander way. He comes and collects them again. By the time he teaches something it is time to go.

There is an important man in this hamlet. Each morning a number of people visit him, discuss issues concerning their family and farm and seek his monetary assistance. People say that even Panchayat[2] meetings don’t get so many people flock together at one time. He is the local money lender or pawn broker.

There is a small grocery shop, which sells everything. Sugar, salt, lentils, cooking oils, lever’s soaps, fancy ribbons for girls and even condoms and cigarettes The lady who manages this has a decent 30 percent profit on everything.

About 55 housing units sprawl over this village complex in tow settlements. You could get groceries, have a barber service to shave or hair cut, clothes stitched and washed and ironed. I expected a caste ridden village, power in the hands of a few. This village is an exception. It has substantial number of harijans [3]  in the form of converted Christians. Since grand fathers’ time many have been staying in this village. Industrialization that took place beyond this Mysireddipalle and surrounding villages has never increased migration of farm labour to industry. Some how these people remained where they were. They say that goaded by hunger and continued famished conditions in the neighboring villages have made some move away from farms to town, but some returned like half starved men with bones and souls intact and the villagers happily welcomed them like the prodigal sons. Unconnected stories. Connected wisdom. Life goes on. I guess that’s what I heard or was made to hear when I met the 82 year old once again.

In spite of the general insufficiency, low productivity in agriculture, lack of career choices (my urban mind) which contribute to breeding more poverty around, (my urban analysis) these villages preferred to stay back where they were. It was interesting for me to gaze at the stars in the Milky Way along with them. Surely none wanted to pluck a single star. Instead they were perhaps worshipping them or just gazing.

Most of these farmers are small and marginal, with neglgibe yields. Mr. Narsimha introduced the Japanese form of seedling practice. Someone else got the village in touch with super phosphate culture. But that wasn’t education. It was initiation. They pour all kinds of fertilizers and returns are surprisingly small. There is a key missing. Water. Water is the key. There is no water. Mostly drought. Ws I hearing that there was complacency?

No certainly not. It is stagnation and perhaps deep rooted attachment cultural and social to the soil in which they were born.

The strategy of India’s Sixth five year Plan on rural development suggesting the necessity to develop all sectors of rural economy rather than merely agriculture was not heard in this village.

The day is born and moves relentlessly to its end. Mr. Narsimha forty eight year old Sarpanch[4] has been looking after these areas for the last fifteen years. In the last elections he vacated the seat for Anji reddy a dynamic young educated person. Narsimha known by his Christian name after conversion is called as Mr. Praskaham[5]. He is rightly the only man who believes in hope and future.[6].