Bihar's Baharampur truly a nirmal gram and there is a Modi connection

While campaigning in Begusarai, the ‘Leningrad of Bihar’, Communist Party of India (CPI) candidate Kanhaiya Kumar and his supporters were hosted by the mukhiya (who was affiliated to the CPI) of Bahrampur village for lunch. Many young villagers also joined in.

But for several of them, the wholehearted welcome to Kanhaiya was only a “good gesture” and not because of “any love for him”.

The village has been a CPI bastion for long but the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) managed to make inroads in the Lok Sabha election in 2014 when it was riding the “Modi wave”.

During the lunch, 23-year-old Shivam Ishwar walked up to this reporter with a smile and some political insights. “Do you see toilets out there?” Ishwar asked as he pointed to at least two toilets in the immediate sight in the fields. “They came up in the last two years.”

Lack of toilets was one big concern for Ishwar a couple of years back. The farms surrounding the village had become commonplace for open defecation. “Fed up with lack of response from local authorities, I decided to write a letter to PM Narendra Modi in October 2017. Villagers back then laughed, wondering whether a letter to the PM would elicit any response,” said Ishwar, who is pursuing engineering. 

“And for me, it was the real test for the prime minister as I wanted to see if he delivered on his promises made during his Independence Day speeches.” 

Ishwar showed a copy of his handwritten letter, which had all the necessary information required to grab the attention of the authorities — even that of the Prime Minister’s Office. Bahrampur was declared as a ‘nirmal gram (clean village)’ in 2006 when it was among 770 panchayats which accepted the Nirmal Gram Puraskar from former President APJ Abdul Kalam. A nirmal gram tag is given to villages which achieve 100 per cent sanitation and have basic hygiene facilities.

It took seven months for Ishwar’s letter to get transferred to the district magistrate but when it happened, the action was swift — more toilets were built near his home.

As Kanhaiya resumed his campaign after the lunch, Ishwar had a question on his mind. “Kanhaiya is good with giving speeches and interviews, but what does he mean when he shouts slogans like ‘Brahmanwaad se azaadi’?”.