Chapter 9 Musahars What Keeps Musahars Entrapped in Poverty? © Pamela Philipose/ActionAid Sajjad Hassan India Exclusion Report 2013-14 Dinesh Manjhi’s life has run in fast motion—at makes the search for employment a desperate 19, he is brother to two sisters and a younger one. Punjab, despite its many hardships, is still brother, son to his 55-year-old mother, and an attractive destination. breadwinner to all. His father died a year ago, No one in Dinesh’s family has a job card due to a sudden illness that the family is still under the agship wage employment scheme unclear about—but it is not uncommon for men for the poor—the Mahatma Gandhi National in this labouring community of Musahars to Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme drop down dead, unable to bear the burden (MGNREGS). Nor is his mother registered of back-breaking manual work on an under- under the government pension scheme for nourished body any further. But Dinesh’s early widows, although the family has made many tryst with adulthood began much before his attempts to be put on both lists. There is a ‘Below father’s demise. It was at least seven years ago Poverty Line’ (BPL) card in the name of his late that—forced by extreme poverty at home—his father, but that hardly gets them much grain father frst took Dinesh along to Gurdaspur, i or anything else. Despite their acute poverty, Punjab, to help with errands on the farm that Dinesh and his family hardly know much about he himself worked on as a seasonal worker. welfare programmes, including those designed Work was hard, but it added a valuable extra specifcally for Dalits amount to what his father saved to bring back home every season. When Dinesh is not labouring on farms in Punjab, he is at home, in Dumri village in Bihar, 1. Introduction eking out a living as a construction labourer Musahars, according to some anthropological in neighbouring Muzaffarpur town, earning accounts, draw their antecedents from the Kol tribe between `00–150 a day, on days that he is able of Chhotanagpur (in Jharkhand), having migrated to fnd work His younger brother, Mukesh, 1, to paddy cultivable areas of what is currently Bihar, is following in Dinesh’s footsteps—picking up probably from the 12th century, and have been the the skills of construction labour, even though single largest source of agricultural labour in the the work is hard and hazardous. But that is region since. In their movement from tribal hills to still better than opportunities in Dumri itself, the plains, they came in contact with a sedentary, as farm hand, available at most for 15–20 days agricultural, caste-based society, characterized by a year, during the (paddy or wheat) harvesting Brahmanical concepts of purity and pollution, and season, at about `100 per day. There is no other were incorporated into the caste hierarchy at the source of income—‘we can only do what we are lowest rank, becoming untouchable. According good at, working with mitti (earth) is what we to Raful hmed, from the hills to the plains, the do’, says Dinesh, ruefully. They of course have fate of the Musahars appears to have had a clear no land of their own to till—resigned forever downward slope. The closer they came to the rice to till lands of others. The burden of the large bowl, the deeper they were pulled into indigence and debt of `27,000 the family owes the local misery.1 But precisely where they acquired the title moneylender on account of the expenses on his usahar is disputed—according to ohn Nesfeld, father’s shraad (funeral), and Dinesh’s own it alludes to them being a fesheating community, wedding a few months ago, mostly, but not masu, meaning fesh and hera meaning seeker2 only, means that the pressure to keep earning On the other hand, Herbert Hope Risley concluded to survive, whilst paying off a part of the debt, that the word referred to the Musahars’ fondness The author is a researcher at the Centre for Equity Studies. All correspondence to: [email protected]. Research conducted for this chapter was supported by Dan Church Aid, India. Grateful thanks to Action Aid India and Muzaffarpur Development Agency D for facilitating the research, and to iran rivastav and angeeta Devi, feld mobiliers of D, for helping to conduct the research. Thanks are also due to Amar Singh and Laloo Manjhi of Samajik Shodh Evam Vikas Kendra, Mehsi for facilitating the East Champaran part of the research and to the participants in the India Exclusion Report Seminar in New Delhi (2–3 September 2013) for their helpful comments. 222 Musahars for eating feld rats3 In either case, Ahmed says, it the nature of exclusion among Musahars, and the was an opprobrious epithet bestowed on Musahars processes that sustain unequal relations. by caste Hindus.4 Research for this chapter was conducted by Dinesh’s story represents the lives of the the Centre for Equity Studies in June 2012 in hundreds of thousands of Musahars (‘total Narauli and Dumri villages, in Musahari block population: 3,500,000 nationally; 2,100,000 in of Muzaffarpur district. It involved qualitative Bihar state; and 60,000 in Muzaffarpur district, household surveys to understand the Musahar of which Dumri village is a part),5 among the situation—their assets and capabilities, access to poorest people in India, caught between survival resources and opportunities, and expectations and despair. There is not enough to eat, nothing about themselves and their children. This to invest in education and health, and nothing, ethnographic examination required our immersion of course, for the small joys of life. Musahars, as in the life of the community, to observe how a rule, have no choice of opportunities—being Musahars negotiate opportunities and barriers, stuck with hard labour mostly on felds, but now and what survival strategies they choose in the face also other manual work—for life. Social protection of those. Focus group discussions were held with schemes, designed for people exactly like Dinesh, different sections to help understand in a deeper have all bypassed them, because the programmes way the group dynamics and underlying forces— fail to reach them, and Musahars themselves are social norms and attitudes—determining the too busy chasing survival to bother much about choices available to people. Musahar participation demanding entitlements. In effect, Dinesh and in village-level institutions was also examined, his Musahar kinsmen have little freedom or to understand their access to opportunities and choice and little hope of gaining either soon. The entitlements. Interactions with service providers abiding impression is of utter hopelessness, of helped examine how Musahars negotiate the permanence of poverty and destitution, and their interaction with state agents over the an inability to come out of this situation. What implementation of laws and access to entitlements. Dinesh’s condition is today was his father’s, and in Comparisons were made across the range of all likelihood will be his children’s tomorrow. It is variables with non-Musahar sections in the village, no wonder then that Musahars themselves blame it such as other lower castes, who seem to have been all on destiny, content to labour on and make the more successful in overcoming exclusion, as well as best of a desperate life ut is that ustice nd how upper caste and richer groups, who are part of the long can a society—even as stubbornly unequal as explanation for the enduring Musahar destitution. Indias—bear the burden of this inustice here is nd fnally, a visit was made to the neighbouring no escaping these questions. East Champaran district, to observe the work being done there by the Musahar Vikas Manch (MVM). What enables extreme poverty, of the kind MVM is a community organization of Musahars suffered by usahars, to endure in India hy that has been mobilizing the community for rights cannot the poorest escape the poverty trap, and entitlements, demonstrating many successes, even across generations, despite policies and but also frustrated in its attempts to get state programmes, and economic and political changes agents to side more vigorously with Musahars and and opportunities all around his chapter seeks their struggles for dignity and a better life for their to understand why, in the case of the Musahars, children. poverty continues to be so resilient. In addressing these questions, the prism of chronic poverty is The rest of the chapter is arranged as follows: used to understand the drivers and maintainers In section two, the specifc nature of usahar of poverty,6 such as poor asset base and weak exclusion is examined, focussing in particular on capabilities, and structural factors like unequal the role of caste in sustaining their exploitation land distribution and caste hierarchies, which hold and marginalization. Section three discusses some back marginalized communities from making use of the key characteristics of Musahar poverty of newer opportunities. This connects to the use and exclusion, including their extremely high of the social exclusion framework,7 to help grasp level of asset and capability deprivation and its 223 India Exclusion Report 2013-14 resulting impacts on their livelihoods, expenditure life that bound them to insecure work and poor, and saving patterns, and human development non-remunerative wages, involving richer outcomes. Section four examines attempts by civil landlords. Each Musahar (indeed, Dalit) family society to mobilize Musahars and strengthen their is linked to a grihasta family, in some sort of a voice, and, fnally, section fve concludes with symbiotic (but unequal) relationship between some preliminary recommendations for reforms.8 the two, which is wholly disadvantageous for the Musahar.