They want roads, electricity, drinking water – sadak, bijli, pani. In addition, the people of Jangipur, West Bengal, the Lok Sabha constituency of Union finance minister Pranab Mukherjee, have some riders and related demands.
It isn’t that Jangipur doesn’t have water. In fact, there is too much of it during the monsoon, which results in a large part of the constituency being marooned. Mukherjee has arranged for two roads, 22 km and 19 km long, connecting the Suti-1 block, an area bordering Jharkhand, with Jangipur town and the district headquarters, Baharampur, at a cost of Rs 72 crore and Rs 32 crore, respectively. Till now, this area, where more than one lakh people reside, used to routinely get cut off from the rest of the district during the monsoon. Once these two roads, with a number of small bridges, are complete, the people of that part would be able to connect to the rest of the district through the year.
In Jangipur, land erosion by the Ganga is a major problem. As Union defence minister earlier, Mukherjee had provided money from the Border Road Fund to help those who had lost their land to such erosion. Similarly, he had arranged funds from other sources and established a degree college at Sagardighi, a training centre for unemployed youth to develop skills, and a 100-bed tuberculosis hospital near Dhulian for the tens of thousands of beedi workers of that area.
The emerging pattern of the demands and aspirations indicates one thing: Jangipur has been deprived of the benefit of development for a long time. "From 1977 to 2004, we remained steadfastly with the Left. Yet, we were not provided with the basic needs," lamented Mohammed Asraf, a rickshaw puller in Jangipur. The district, Murshidabad, was one of the 11 most backward ones in the state and was entitled to get special central funds under the Backward Region Grant Fund (BRGF). Yet, the record shows the district administration could not make use of Rs 11 crore pf the allocation in 2007-08 and as a result, did not get further funds in 2008-09.
Now, Jangipur expects Mukherjee to also perform the role of gram panchayat pradhan, municipal chairman and local MLA. The seasoned politician is not backing off. He has enlisted a number of public sector banks to start various projects there. So far, 14 branches have been opened in areas like Sagardighi, Nabagram, Khargram, Raghunathgunj, Lalgola, Suti and Jangipur, and more are in the pipeline. This might help people of the area to get loans for self-employment schemes. A proposed military cantonment at Chanuk in Nabagram block will create a number of job opportunities there. Land acquisition is on.
A vast area of this region's groundwater, in the heart of the Ganga basin, is not fit for drinking due to heavy content of arsenic. So, with some prodding from Mukherjee, 20 arsenic-free tubewells have been sunk by private and public enterprises. SAIL and Shipping Corporation of India have helped in this.
In the recent past, also at Mukherjee’s behest, 18,000 cycles specially made for the handicapped were distributed over all the nine blocks of Jangipur, indicating a high occurrence of polio in the area, which lacks a proper health care system and awareness, too. Mohammed Akhruzzaman, a Congress leader from the Raghunathgunj block, says a few maternity hospitals to strengthen the existing rural health care infrastructure would help.
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In this poverty-stricken district, the beedi industry is the single largest employer. Of a population of 6.8 million, at least a million are involved in the industry. Of these, Jangipur subdivision alone accounts for around 700,000 beedi workers. So, the challenge of reaching development to the poor people in Jangipur may well start with the beedi workers.
Pataka Industries Pvt Ltd, arguably the largest beedi manufacturer in India, is also based in this district. With an annual turnover of more than Rs 600 crore, Pataka has three units in Jangipur and six more units in the district. According to Rezaul Karim, the general manager (production), Pataka has 4,000 workers on its permanent payroll and another 160,000 as piece-rate workers, who also get work through year. The scale of the operation can be gauged from the fact that the monthly provident fund payments it deposits each month is around Rs 2.25 crore. A visit to its Aurangabad unit shows the huge factory sheds brimming with workers, busily batching and stacking thousands of bundles of handmade beedis. It is obvious that the entire industry is still dependent on sheer human labour with little or no involvement of machines.
Labour is very cheap here. Though the government has fixed the minimum daily wage of a beedi worker at Rs 92 per 1,000 rolled, they hardly get more than Rs 42-44. Pataka’s GM (sales), M A Rahaman, admits over phone from Delhi that his company is no exception. But, he argues, this has much to do with the existing government rules. Rahaman, also President of the All India Beedi Manufacturers Association (AIBMA), says the industry is facing an unequal competition from unlabelled manufacture. He explains that according to government rules, unbranded (unlabelled) beedis do not attract any excise. Those of the organised industry like Pataka, Meghna, etc are taxed at Rs 14 per 1,000 beedis.
There is an anomaly here that Jangipur wants the finance minister to correct. The Cigarettes and Other Tobacco Products Act, 2003, and the Standard Weights and Measurement Act, 1996 (further amended in 2009) stipulates that no beedi (or tobacco) products can be sold in the market without a statutory warning, along with the picture of an infected lung on the packet. Then, Rahaman argues, the question of selling unlabelled beedis in the market does not arise. All beedis should be sold in packets and also attract excise at the same rate. He says the AIBMA has given a memorandum to the Union finance minister to this effect and expects something would be done in the coming budget.