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It is one room in a huge field just off the Banaras-Lucknow highway, where the wheat crop has been harvested and the parched earth is awaiting water and the next crop.
Inside the badly-lit room, with one window and thick walls, sits an old man hunched over a manual sewing machine. A rusting sign hung askew over the door proclaims this is the 'Chicago Tailors and Drapers'. The old man blearily looks out of the door. No, he doesn't know where Chicago is but could, he says hopefully, stitch a kurta in a few hours….
This is the second time that day Chicago was mentioned. "Eastern Uttar Pradesh used to be known as the Chicago of the East," says Yogendra Narain, former chief secretary to the state government. It is endemically backward, with no industry. Agriculture - and litigation - is the only source of income.
The Dabur group started here but quickly pulled out and relocated to Uttarakhand. There is no water, hardly any power, and a catch-phrase here is hathiyai lihin (literally grabbed). Whether it is land or a house or cattle or a wife, this happens a lot here.
It is the badlands of Uttar Pradesh: Purvanchal.
Are there structural reasons why Eastern UP has slipped so badly down the development index? Or is it just a cultural thing - lazy people , don't want to work…?
It is a bit of both. Mayank Singh who teaches at Banaras Hindu University (BHU), says Eastern UP has five universities and as many as two central universities but there are no employment opportunities. BHU has a 35,000-student-intake capacity and the cut-off point for admissions has been going down every year, because no one wants to study here.
The loudest cheering when Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP)'s prime ministerial candidate Narendra Modi addressed a rally in Rouhaniya, on the outskirts here, was when he announced the BJP would offer better "samarthan moolya" (support price) if it came to power. The farmer has hardly any access to electricity. He has to dig nearly 350 metres to strike water for a borewell. Agricultural labour is expensive.
Little wonder that the mafiosi thrive in this region. Gang wars are common, extortion a fact of life. Whether it is Brijbhushan Saran Singh of Gonda (who told television cameras at a police station in Bahraich: "I am a mafia man. How can I be Gandhi? I have 40 cases lodged against me") or Harishankar Tewari or others. The area is controlled by the mafia.
In 1998, then chief minister Kalyan Singh asked the home secretary to prepare a list of all active mafias. According to the list, at that time there were 744 active gangs, with an annual turnover of Rs 10,000 crore. A special task force was established to clean up the system. Many mafia leaders were killed in subsequent operations.
It is poverty that drives the economy. Which is probably why women outnumbered men in the queues to collect the unemployment allowance of Rs 1,000 a month offered by the Akhilesh Yadav government. The queues snaked for miles. Many fainted and had to be given saline drips. "People registered as authorised beggars," said a rickshaw puller.
In Varanasi, in the old days, the Banaras silk and sari used to be the pride and joy of the region. Powerlooms have replaced the handloom, says Shahid, who belongs to the powerloom industry because handloom is just too expensive. It's not that people don't want to work but "there is no electricity, there is no enterprise; how much can you struggle," he asks.
Efforts to create an enabling environment for commerce are absent. The only hope here is that Modi becomes prime minister. "If we elect him and he becomes PM, we are certain he will do something for us," says Ram Sharan, who at 64 is plying a cycle rickshaw despite being visibly unwell (he had to excuse himself and throw up during this conversation).
"People come to Varanasi to die. This is the city's biggest industry. They want moksha," said Mayank Singh. "In the circumstances, this city touches the optimal mark in cynicism. It can only get better. Because it cannot get any worse."
PURVANCHAL: THE UP BADLANDS
- Purvanchal is represented by 23 MPs in the Lok Sabha and 117 legislators in the 403-member Uttar Pradesh Assembly
- It consists chiefly of three divisions: The eastern Awadhi region in the west, the western Bhojpuri region in the east and the northern Baghelkhand region in the south. It lies on the Indo-Gangetic plain. Along with western Bihar, it is the most densely populated area in the world
- The rich quality of soil is favourable for agriculture
- It includes the districts of Varanasi, Chandauli, Ghazipur, Jaunpur, Mirzapur, Sonbhadra, Sant Ravidas Nagar, Gorakhpur, Kushinagar, Deoria, Azamgarh, Mau, Maharajganj, Basti, Sant Kabir Nagar, Siddharth Nagar and Ballia
