Despite yatra JP's village lies forgotten

By Imran Khan - - - - Sitab Diara (Bihar), Oct 11 (IANS) The winds of change sweeping through Bihar have curiously left out a forgotten yet important part of the state -- the tiny village of Sitab Diara,

 the birthplace of legendary socialist leader Jayaprakash Narayan, which has been chosen by Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) veteran L.K. Advani as the starting point of his anti-graft march.

 Born Oct 11, 1902, Jayaprakash Narayan, popularly known as JP, is considered the doyen of the socialist movement in India. But ironically, even as a number of his staunch followers have risen to prominence at both state and national level politics, Sitab Diara lies in a sorry state of neglect.
 
 Located some 150 km from Patna in Saran district on Bihar's western fringe, bordering Uttar Pradesh, the village, with a population of nearly 15,000, lacks basic amenities like clean drinking water, healthcare, roads and even electricity.
 
 The lack of development is even more glaring considering that just a few metres away, in Uttar Pradesh, a village named after him boasts of all amenities.
 
 "Look at Jaya Prakash Nagar in Uttar Pradesh (adjoining Sitab Diara)...it is shining bright with all facilities like a school, health centre, electricity and drinking water, but our village is still where it was decades ago," local resident Shiv Narain Singh told IANS.
 
 This even as JP's followers have been calling the shots in Bihar and Indian politics for the last three decades. Among them are Chief Minister Nitish Kumar, Deputy Chief Minister Sushil Kumar Modi, former chief minister Lalu Prasad Yadav, former central minister Ram Vilas Paswan, state opposition leader Abdul Bari Siddiqui and national president of Janata Dal-United Sharad Yadav.
 
 Some of them had announced grand plans to change the face of their mentor's village, but nothing concrete has taken shape yet.
 
 "These leaders use his name for marketing their politics," said another villager, Brajesh Singh.
 
 Yet another Sitab Diara inhabitant, Alok Kumar, said villagers have been forced to drink arsenic-infected water.
 
 "Some powerful people are even running a liquor manufacturing unit in the village, with the full knowledge of the local administration," he said.
 
 A local resident said that after the announcement of Advani's yatra, a 30-km-long stretch connecting Sitab Diara to Chapra, district headquarters of Saran, is being revamped.
 
 But the rest of the village is still as it was.
 
 According to villagers, JP's ancestral house is in a dilapidated condition and a library established by him has collapsed due to neglect.
 
 Former prime minister Chandra Shekhar, a close associate of JP, had directed Sitab Diara to be developed as a model village. The task was handed over to the central rural development ministry, which was asked to prepare a master plan, but nothing has materialised.
 
 In the early 1980s, the Bihar government announced plans to open a big hospital in JP's village in the name of his wife Jaya Prabha. Villagers even donated land, but the project is yet to see the light of the day.
 
 In 2003, the then Rabri Devi-led government announced that it will provide solar power to the village.
 
 Two-and-a-half years ago, even Nitish Kumar, during his 'Vikas Yatra' (development march), assured villagers that Sitab Diara will be developed. But there is no improvement on the ground.
 
 A political crusader, JP led a people's movement against Indira Gandhi's Emergency rule in the 1970s and orchestrated the end of the Congress party's dominance in Indian polity.
 
 Beginning in Bihar, his movement spread all over India and resulted in the first non-Congress coalition taking office at the centre in 1977, ousting the Congress for the first time since independence.