| Even before I ask anything, Lu tells me, "The Party doesn't command any more, it doesn't even manage, it only advises!" Lu is the Party secretary of the Pagoda of the Phoenix [a commune of ten villages and 12,000 people in Gansu province]. He must have got a dressing down from his superiors when they learnt a foreigner was venturing into his territory without prior authorisation. Lu seems sincere. At least, he is a local peasant not an apparatchik sent arbitrarily by the Party. In many a village, the Party secretary is a tyrant, but there are not too many complaints against young Lu. No doubt, the villagers have to pay for his and his wife's upkeep. They have built them a modern house covered with white tiles and they pay all Lu's petty expenses such as cigarettes and bus fares when he goes to the city. In every village, the Party lives off the poor peasants. When the local bosses invite their family and friends, the villagers have to look after them, an unofficial tax, very heavy at that. Often the Party secretary grabs a plot of land to build his house. Either the peasants give in or they petition, taking their fight right up to Beijing at times. En route, they get beaten up by the police and the ringleaders are put behind bars. If there are too many petitioners in the capital, the police round them up and keep them in a stadium till such time as they can be sent back to their village. If a petitioner happens to win his case, the press lauds the fairness of the national leaders and laments the negligence of the local cadres. That's how things work. Apparatchiks can do anything provided the top doesn't get to hear of it. |
| Lu however is not too greedy. "He can read and write," I am told. He's been to high school; he understands official correspondence which he translates into the vernacular for the villagers. Lu is proud of having been elected by the twenty-nine members of his cell. Isn't that a small number in a village of two thousand? The Party should recruit more actively, he agrees, but few are willing to "devote themselves to the people". How many women are there in the Party? Taken aback by the question, Lu makes a mental count and admits there are none. After giving the matter some thought, he concedes it would be good to have one or two. |
| Lu reverts to the slogans he has been instructed to repeat for my benefit. "The Party has only one mission, the development of China." He's been entrusted the task of explaining this to the villagers. The country comes first, then the village. This means ensuring an inexhaustible supply of cheap obedient labour for the factories. As soon as they turn sixteen, Lu urges girls and boys to leave the Pagoda of the Phoenix and sell their labour elsewhere. The district Party has set for him an annual quota of emigrants in accordance with age, sex and qualifications. The quotas are based on the needs of the industry and service sectors in the cities and the distant east. If Lu fails to meet his quota, he will be punished with a fine or a demotion in the Party. However, as the young leave even before they are asked to, Lu doesn't have a problem. |
| Parents too are eager that their children go. Teenagers who remain in the village are dubbed as good for nothing. If they emigrate, the families hope they will send back a part of their earnings. Some do, others disappear forever. Very few children come back and take care of their parents. Once a cardinal Chinese virtue, filial piety has been supplanted by the market economy. The number of orphans is increasing by the day. Fathers go to work in far off places and never return. Unable to raise their children alone, mothers emigrate in turn or commit suicide swallowing pesticide, a cheap poison freely available in the countryside. Who is to pay for the education of these abandoned children? As soon as they can, they too will join the hundred "" or is it two hundred "" million migrants in search of work. The communist regime has been consistent if nothing else. When in 1958 Mao Zedong ordered industry's great leap forward, local Party cadres received the same instructions: twenty million had to be sent to the factories. Three years later, the Great Leap failed, as was to be expected. There was a widespread famine and the twenty million were sent back to their villages. Mao marvelled at this feat. Which other party in the world could displace twenty million people by simply snapping its fingers, he asked. There was none. |
| The Year of the Rooster |
| AUTHOR: Guy Sorman PUBLISHER: Full Circle PAGES: 302 PRICE: Rs 495 |
Top Section
Explore Business Standard