A village in Jharkhand has carved out a niche for itself by showing for over 30 long years that its people do not need to visit the police station to seek help for resolution of their conflicts. The gram sabha (village council) has been doing this job amicably and everyone is satisfied.
Eager to keep up this tradition for as long as possible, people in Khambra village in Jharkhand’s northern Giridih district give the credits to popular leftist MLA and poet Mahendra Singh, who was born in this village. The lone CPI(M-L) legislator in Jharkhand Assembly, was gunned down allegedly by the Maoists in 2005.
“There has been no police case from this village and quite a few neighbouring villages for over 33 years now. We the villagers here simply feel no need to ever visit the Bagodar police station. The sad exception was when our leader Mahendra Singh was shot dead in broad daylight seven years ago,” said Maheshwar Singh, an ageing villager from Khambra.
As thousands of villagers from across Giridih district would gather around a bust of Singh in Khambra village on Monday, January 16, to pay their tributes to Singh on the seventh anniversary of his assassination, the villagers of Khambra will also renew their pledge to resolve mutual conflicts by amiable discussions in the gram sabha without the need for police intervention. “Villagers here know their responsibilities as well as their rights. Therefore they hardly feel the need to seek revenge on one another by approaching the police with complaints,” said CPI(M-L)’s Giridih district secretary Manoj Bhakt.