Survival off Stamp Size Plots

According to Agriculture Census 2000-01, two-thirds (64.34%) of the 11.6 million land holdings in Bihar are smaller than 2000 sq. meters (i.e. 0.5 acres). These sub-half acre holdings account for nearly 20% of the total cultivable area in the state and their average size is just 760 sq. meters (0.19 acres).  I wonder how the rice-wheat cropping system, predominant in Bihar, can be sustained on such stamp sized plots.

Elsewhere smallholders are diversifying to high value crops and crop based activities (like dairying) to eke out a living off their tiny plots. But that does not seem to be happening in Bihar. Here rice-wheat system continues to dominate agriculture. Rice-Wheat cropping on such small plots, with yields as low as they are in Bihar (rice+wheat<4 tons/ha), cannot provide enough food or employment. These 7.5 million smallholder families must be supplementing their incomes from other activities–like working in others’ fields and migrating to villages and cities of other states of India–just to survive. If so, then the claim that 3/4th of the working population in rural Bihar is employed mainly in agriculture becomes suspect. It may still be true, but it definitely requires closer scrutiny.

Muzaffarpur

Muzaffarpur is my hometown, “the place I belong”.

Muzaffarpur is the largest town in north Bihar. It is a relatively new settlement with humble beginnings. The founder, Muzaffar Khan, was an amil ( revenue collector) of Mughals in eighteenth century. Years before East India Company’s accession to the Diwani, he selected 75 bighas (~ 68 acres or 0.27 sq. km) of land from the village of Sikandarpur on the north, Kanhauli on the east, Sayyidpur on the south,  and Sariyaganj on the west, and called the town Muzaffarpur, after his own name.

Few noticed the founding of the new town. For decades it remained an obscure place.  The name Muzaffarpur does not even appear in the settlement records of 1790. Apparently, no one in the government knew it existed till one Sankar Dat brought it to the attention of the Company officials. We do not know who this Sankar Dat was. In 1817, more than half a century after its founding, Muzaffarpur had only 667 houses. It was still a village. But then the town grew rapidly and by the Census of 1872, it had become the second largest town in Tirhut district after Darbhanga with a population of 38,223. Darbhanga (47,450), Hajipur (22,306), Lalganj (12,338), Rosera (9441) and Sitamarhi (5496) were other major towns of Tirhut in 1872. After the famine of 1874, Tirhut was split into districts of Darbhanga and Muzaffarpur in 1875. Muzaffarpur town became the administrative headquarter of the eponymous district.

(This is from WW Hunter’s A Statistical Record of Bengal, Vol. XII, first published in 1877. More will follow as I read more).

 

Mobile Bihar

Number of cell phone subscribers in Bihar crossed one crore (ten million) mark this year. The state is experiencing telecom revolution: subscription increased from 1.1 million in 2005 to more than 10 million in 2008–a ten-fold increase in 3 years! I don’t know of any technology, innovation, or habit that spread so fast. Even chai and bidi took more time and effort to become widespread addictions. My grandfather used to tell us stories of how, when he was young, tea companies and beedi companies used to distribute chai and beedi free (“lutaate the“) to get people hooked to the new habit. Now cellphone companies use “lifetime offers” and free incoming.

Cell phone revolution is not unique to Bihar or even India. It is a worldwide phenomenon.  In fact, Bihar ranks fourteenth, behind most other big states, in cellphone subscription. Yet the numbers are significant. Roughly 10% of state population owns a cell phone now. According to a 2008 survey by Pratham, covering 21,000 households from 1000 villages of the state, 38% of all rural households have phones (mobile or landlines) while only 17.8% have TVs and 27.4% have electricity connection.

Rural Development Minister, Raghuvansh Prasad Singh, once complained that more rural households in India have TV sets than septic latrines, even when both cost about the same. He was lamenting the lack of demand for hygiene. Even I am surprised: such widespread ownership of phones in a state that is so poor! Nearly half of Bihar lives on less than a dollar a day and three-fourth on less than $2/day. Sixty percent of the children are malnourished and 73% houses are kutcha or semi-pakka. What is it about phones that makes them an essential even for people who are so poor? Is the need for connectivity so high? Higher than the need for health and hygiene? Like Raghuvansh Prasad Singh, this hierarchy of needs or the preference order of people baffles me too.

I understand that phones are a necessity in a state that sends the maximum number of migrant laborers to other states. They reduce the pain and inconvenience of separation of families due to migration. Yet I find such high density of ownership surprising.

While expressing my surprise, I must confess that after avoiding the lure of 24 hour connectivity for years, I too succumbed in Novermber 2007, and now shell out $ 40 every month from my measly stipendiary earnings to stay in touch with family and friends.

Back to Bihar: Power Starved Bihar-II

Social scientists often deride engineers and MBAs for their naïve confidence in technological solutions to development problems. I am aware of the naivete. Yet I do have an engineer like faith in what decent electricity provision can do for Bihar’s development. I have thought of the social, political and economic factors behind the wretched condition of power infrastructure in Bihar. A question I have often asked myself is: is there enough demand for better power supply in Bihar, specially in its rural areas? Even if someone sets up the power supply system once, what is the guarantee that the system won’t fall into disrepair and disuse again? I don’t have answers to these questions. But I do feel that even if these concerns are valid, electricity sector in Bihar still needs a big push. Biharis may not deserve this push, but they do need it.

Just look at the numbers: less than 10 percent of Bihar’s households have electricity connection. In a state of 90 million people, there are only 1.85 million consumers. 18,217 of the state’s 45,103 villages remain un-electrified. Even the privileged few, who have electricity connections, get an indifferent power supply and have to rely on costly power back-up systems. In fact, BSEB handles just 8 billion kWh of electricity every year. After factoring in the technical losses in transmission and distribution—say at 25%, given extremely poor condition of the network—per capita power available in Bihar works out to just about 65 kWh/year. This is worse than Sub-Saharan Africa.

A big challenge in reviving the system is the Bihar State Electricity Board (BSEB) itself. It is by far the most inefficient electricity utility in India.

If we look at generation, BSEB owns two thermal power stations: Barauni (320 MW) and Kanti (220 MW), both in terrible state of disrepair for several years now. Only one 110MW unit in Barauni is producing any electricity. Kanti thermal power station has been transferred to NTPC and is a ruin, barely 25 years after its inauguration. NTPC is practically rebuilding it. Kanti is likely to generate 500 million kWh in 2009-10. Bihar gets most of its power (~bout 7500 MUs/year ) from central allocation and there is a huge unmet demand that will only increase as electricity spreads to more households and villages. The state badly needs new generation capacity. But given BSEB’s track record, the government would do well to let NTPC or private investors set up new plants and buy electricity from them.

The situation is not much better in transmission and distribution. ATC losses were 47-48% in 2007 by BSEB’s own admission. Actual losses must be higher. Half the consumers have meter-less connections and BSEB claims that agricultural consumption was 20% of the total consumption (890 MUs) in 2006. It later revised this number to 13% of the total (578 MUs). I think even this revised number is an overestimate, given the fact that it is hard to come by a running electric pumpset in Bihar. I have not seen any in my extensive fieldworks in the state. Minor Irrigation census also reports that only 10% of all pumpsets in the state run on electricity. Why would any farmer own an electric pumpset in Bihar when the flat rate is as high as Rs. 2400/HP/year with barely any power being available in rural areas? There is little doubt that like all state utilities, BSEB is also hiding some of its T&D losses as agricultural consumption.

BSEB’s inefficiencies are also apparent from the fact that while it gets electricity at an average cost of Rs. 1.88/unit, average cost at the consumer end is Rs. 5.00/unit (including subsidies and cross-subsidies) in 2007 and is projected to increase up to Rs. 5.27/unit in FY 2009. Transmission and distribution costs, including losses, are Rs. 3.39/unit—1.8 times more than the purchase and generation cost. This is too high especially when we consider the fact that BSEB does not have a large rural network.

What really hurts is that even for such high costs ((12 US cents/unit), the system provides unreliable and extremely poor quality service. In urban areas of Bihar, almost all business units and all households that can afford, rely on power back-up from diesel generator sets. As a result, the total consumer cost of power is very-very high, close to 25 cents/unit. Such high energy cost is one of the biggest stumbling blocks to development of both manufacturing and service sectors in the state. In rural areas, nearly all farmers rely on diesel pumpsets for irrigation and high cost of irrigation is a major barrier to the much needed agricultural intensification in Bihar.

The 13,723 employees of BSEB constitute what is probably one of the most vicious interest groups of Bihar. Their wage costs the state a fortune. For every rupee spent on power purchase and generation, BSEB spends 36 paise on paying its staff: current and retired. Staff costs account for 50 percent of the total revenue generated from power sales[1]. But even more is lost to their corruption, inefficiency and intransigence to any reforms. Mancur Olson gave us a theory of how small eats big in public sphere; here is a prototype example with thirteen thousand people holding ninety million to ransom.

[1] Against that annual repair and maintenance expenditure accounts for less than 2.5% of power purchase and generation costs and only 3.5% of total revenue from power sales.

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How Much do I Earn: Is it so Rude to Ask?

I was talking to a cousin yesterday. We were classmates in college (IGNOU) and prepared for competitive exams together. He is a good friend. We were talking after a long time and I asked him about his marriage plans. He said, he was not getting married any soon. I asked why? And he responded: because everyone interested wants to know my salary and i don’t want to tell them.  Of course! he was overreacting and exaggegerating. He thought so too. Yet he was really irritated by this inqusitiveness.   

 I know the feeling all too well. Everytime i go home, I face this question, and not only from people interested in marrying their daughters to me. I get irritated too, irritated and embarassed. I am 32, and still a student. In God of Small Things, Arundhati Roy calls age 32, a viable age . (She also calls it a dieable age, but let’s not talk about that). But i am far from being viable. I barely scrape by. confessing it again and again is not fun. And people do not stop just at income assessment. There are some who want details of my expense account too. One of my dad’s cousins comes to see me everytime when i am in Muzaffarpur and takes a meticulous account of my income and expenditure. How much do I spend on food, shelter, hair styling, women, wine: he needs to know everything. As if he was deputed by NSSO to do a sample survey of consumption habits of Indians on F-1 visa.

Why does he, and many others, do this? How would they know if i am not telling white lies? I think they do it because they feel compelled to.  My father’s generation in my family is still deeply rooted in agrarian traditions. All my uncles are farmers or at least take active interest in managing their farm operations. And when you are a farmer, you know what everyone around sows and reaps. Its right there, before everyone’s eyes. If the crop is good, you boast; if it is bad, you lament: all in public. Hiding your true income is not only impossible; it may even be dysfunctional. After all you rely on the community for insurance. I think the disclosure norms of agrarian households are stricter than those for public listed companies, and may be just as functional. Perhaps, that is the reason why asking someone his income, considered incredibly rude in cities, is a norm in my community. People cannot do without it. It makes me uncomfortable because i am from a different generation with different etiquettes. But, unlike my cousin, I don’t think there is anything inherently wrong with this kind of inquisitiveness.  I don’t look down upon people who ask me these questions, or think that they are uncultured. Just that they are from a diffrent culture. I will be the first one to admit that this probing makes me uncomfortable, and this paparazzi persistence with something that makes someone uncomfortable, just to satisfy your curiosity, is considered rude in all cultures and tradtions.

Any counterexamples?

100 Bimaar…

For a population of 100 million, there are only 6 recognized medical colleges in Bihar. In north Bihar, where more than half of the state’s population lives, there are only 2 medical colleges. 390 new doctors graduate from these 6 colleges every year while the number of potential patients grows by about 2 million. On average, we have one doctor for 2700 people in Bihar. In rural areas, where 90% of Biharis live, the ratio must be much lower. It will only get worse as we add only 1 new doctor for 5000 newbornes every year. Unless we do something.

Government of Bihar proposed to increase the number of seats to 700 in the existing 6 medical colleges and build 3 new medical colleges in the state. Medical Council of India (MCI) disapproved both proposals and Supereme Court upheld MCI’s decision. MCI did not allow increasing of seats in existing colleges because if found faculty and facilities inadequate even for the current student strength in all six colleges. I do not know why MCI disallowed setting up of new medical colleges though. May be, it wants the state government to improve existing colleges before it sets up new ones. A sensible decision in my view.

This means that the doctor-population ratio will keep going down in Bihar for some time to come. Treatment will be expensive and difficult to access for most Biharis. We want more doctors in rural areas. Recently GoI decided to make a 1-year rural internship an essential for MBBS degree. I am not sure if the new rule will achieve its purpose. Young doctors will find ways to skip the rural stay component. I think one way to ensure availability of qualified doctors in rural areas is to produce more doctors every year. If there are more doctors, the new ones will be forced, by increased competition, to move to unglamorous areas to find practice. Right now, doctors are so scarce, they do not need to go the extra mile to survive.

My Family’s Involvement in Independence Movement

Textbooks and teaching of history in India have a Bollywood quality to them. Characters and regimes are almost always one-dimensional: either good without a blemish or bad without any saving grace.
Reality is seldom so, even for the heroes of the history. Much less for the common people. My friend Rahul in his May 2008 entry ”A Story to Tell” asks :

“How did native tradesmen, civil servants, and those with occupations and social connections vested in the British empire in India feel about the independence movement?”

This set me thinking about my own family’s involvement in independence movement.

Much of what i know about my forefathers is due to my eea (paternal grandmother). She was married to my family in 1939, when she was just twelve years old. I don’t think she got a fair deal from her in-laws. Still she was fiercely proud of the family and tried to instill the same pride in me.  Like official historiography, her narrations also had a purpose beyond just my amusement.  Objectivity must have suffered in the process but I was too young to doubt, question or filter. Since then i have tried to fill in the gaps, but without a historian’s rigor or a story teller’s imagination.  Here is some of it…

I come from a family of petty zamindaars (landlords). A 19th century land record, that i have seen myself, describes pesha: kashtkaari-o-mahajani (occupation: farming and money-lending]. This probably points to the humble origins of my family. But mahajani must have paid rich dividends in time and the family came to acquire zamindari rights over (whole or parts of) 56 villages spread all over the old Muzaffarpur district.

As family’s landholdings increased, so did its involvement in public life. I do not know if it was by design or by sheer coincidence. What i know for sure is that there was a division of labor within the large joint family. My great grandfather had two elder brothers: Reejhan bhaiya and Bijan Bhaiya. The older (Reejhan Shahi) took charge of Zamindari interests. He was a natural: frugal, hardworking, ruthless, manipulative and well versed with the world of court-kechehri . The younger one, Babu Brijnandan Shahi, was man of intellect. He was the first college graduate from my village (1917) and he took active part in Congress politics from a very early age. He attended the first Congress session held in Bihar and was the pre-eminent Congress leader of the area till his untimely death in 1940-41at age of 45 or so.

He seems to be an interesting character from whatever little i have heard of him. He was a khadi wearing Gandhian but he was also one of the first few in the district to own a motor-car. He would often disapprove of Reejhan bhaiya’s typical zamindari machinations and manipulations but would never resist him firmly. In his autobiography and also in Discovery of India, Nehru laments capture of Congress by local elites like my great granduncle, Brijnandan Shahi. Nehru thought that such people associated with Congress to exploit Gandhi’s (and even his own) moral authority and charisma to cement their power over raiyyats. As the most active, popular and in-demand campaigner of his party in elections, he resented the fact that he had to help local leaders who were active in elections but absent in grassroots activities.

Brijnandan Shahi was also a leader in the same mould. My grandfather, who admired him and followed him into politics, once told me that it was his election to Local Board Chairmanship that hollowed our family out financially. Voters were bribed with bicycles–a thousand were distributed at a time when whole villages did not have even one—free food for days, and much else. Our family spent millions (in today’s value) on that election. Millions that were extracted ruthlessly from dirt poor farmers and spent with abandon on election of a representative from Gandhi’s party. Nehru was rightfully resentful of such leaders but even he was helpless. The capture of Congress was complete and over time Congress party became increasingly reliant on the local elite for material and popular support. Nehru may not have liked Brijnandan Shahi but he did borrow his car for campaigning in 1935 assembly elections. Brijnandan Shahi, while taking Nehru to his destination in his car, tried to take a detour through his own constituency under some ruse. Nehru was extremely popular; his one glimpse would have given a big boost to Shahi’s election. The seasoned campaigner in Nehru immediately saw through Shahi’s stratagem and Shahi received a dose of the famous Nehru temperament. 

Brijnandan Shahi was the pioneer. Soon, others followed him into active politics. Some of the best and the brightest in the family chose a political career and made the required sacrifices for it. They spun khadi, were rusticated from college, passed up lucrative government job opportunities and even went to jail. Even women in the family were active. They spun khadi and sang freedom songs: Gandhi baba more dulha bane hain, dulhin bani sarkar! Charakhwa chalu rahe. Irwin jee dekho samdhi bane hai kheer khiauni mein maange suraaj, Charakhwa chalu rahe…(This particular song celebrated the roundtable meet and the Gandhi-Irwin pact, 1931). A small new building, called “Congress”, was built specially for this purpose. It still stands in my village. Not much goes on there anymore.

Active participation in Congress and the independence movement was a drain on family finances but it brought recognition and respect way beyond our means and pedigree. Thanks to Gandhi, wearing khadi, boycotting college, attending congress conventions and going to jail had all become signs of being more advanced and more enlightened. My grandma’s family owned more land and was wealthier, yet, she used to tell us, they were in awe of my family because of its involvement in public life.

One more family story to make my point clear. One of my great grand uncles was married in a rich family. When my family reached the bride’s place, they found that everyone on the bride’s side was wearing silk. On this side, only a few people had silken kurtas. Now this could be a source of major embarrassment for Shahis of Baruraj. Groom’s family was becoming increasingly nervous and dispirited when someone came up with a brilliant idea: Let’s give the few available silken kurtas to servants while all the babus, including the groom, proudly wear Khaddar. Khadi not only saved the day for babus of Baruraj but they also managed to make a show of their being modern, educated, conscientious. Now silk was beneath them, a sign of retrogression.

Gandhi made conviction by colonial government a thing of prestige. Montagu-Chelmsford Reforms and later on Government of India Act 1935 brought power and patronage opportunities to public life. Congress compromise policy of taking everyone along allowed families like mine to non-cooperate with one hand while collecting land revenues for His Majesty’s government with the other.

One last family story to end the piece. During Quit India Movement in 1942, people burned down the police station in my village, chased away the government officials and made Reejhan Shahi, the no-nonsense elder brother of Brijnandan Shahi, in-charge. It was an act of treason he readily took part in, even if under popular pressure. But he was not the kind of a man who could be made to do anything against his wish. He must have been carried away by the zeitgeist. Only a short while ago he had collected “loyal to government” flags issued by the collector and showed them to the American Scouts when they passed through my village during the war period.

Chapra (Bihar): The Sea of Poppies, the Land of Gunpowder and the Home of Girmitiyas

Amitava Ghosh has written a new book: The Sea of Poppies. Like his other books, this one also seems to be based on a lot of historical research. I have not read the book; i have only read excerpts here.

He makes an interesting claim in the book: “The Ghazipur (in eastern UP) and Patna opium factories between them produced the wealth of Britain. It is astonishing to think of it but the Empire was really founded on opium”. A lot of opium came from the bhojpuri speaking areas of Bihar, including Chapra, my maternal home.

I did not know that Amitava Ghosh has his roots in Chapra. His ancestors left East Bengal in 1656, and after much wandering they settled in Chhapra and remained there for the next 150 years. His father grew up speaking Bhojpuri. This is such a pleasant surprise. He also happens to be uncle of one of my best friends in America. Now I am beginning to believe in the “six degrees of separation” idea:-).

Ghosh says that opium was the major economic activity in that region in 19th century when his family settled there. I thought Saran was also a major source of Saltpeter (Potassium Nitrate)–the main ingredient of gunpowder before synthetic sources were invented. Saltpeter was much in demand in 18th and 19th century Europe in all the great wars–The Seven Years’ and the Thirty Years’ and the Napoleanic Wars– being waged to decide the supremacy over the continent and the world.

Besides gunpowder, opium and indigo, Chapra and its neighboring districts were also THE source of indentured labor, the girmitiya mazdoors, who were taken to distant lands of Mauritius, the Carribeans and Surinam to work on plantations. This book is about them.

Talking about these laborers, Ghosh says “for me what was so hard to imagine, so incredibly poignant, was the moment of departure. What did it mean for them? They were farmers, the most rooted people. The courage it took at that time for a Bihari to set out across the kala pani is something you and I can barely conceive of. I felt so moved by that, such admiration for them in a way that I wanted to write about it. I wanted to think about it in detail, what was it really like, the actual moment of departure when you see everything you know disappearing behind you. What these people endure is unbelievable, nothing magical could equal it”.

I agree! It is incredibly poignant. Like my friend Rahul, I also love books that try to reconstruct lives of common people in historical times. Amitava Ghosh makes it even more interesting by mixing facts with fiction and fantasia. I cannot wait to start this book. It is definitely on the top of my summer reading list now.

The Extent of Landlessness in Bihar (some new data added)

For last three decades food was available for cheap–the cheapest ever in known human history. But that seems to be changing. Price of rice and wheat have almost doubled over the last one year in the international market. Some Facts and Figures on food prices from BBC.

Rising food prices help net sellers and hurt net buyers of food.  I was wondering what percentage of people in Bihar–the most rural, the most agricultural and the poorest state of India–are net buyers of food? I could not find the answer on the internet or in published NSS reports. So, I did this rough estimation from land distribution data I found in a 2002 NSS survey (see the table).  

There were 11.7 million rural households in Bihar in 2002-03. 29% (~3.4 million HHs) of them did not cultivate any land–own or leased– in 2002-03. Another 15% (1.8 million HHs) operated holdings smaller than 400 sq. meters.  Altogether, seventy-five percent of rural households in Bihar did not cultivate any land or cultivated holdings smaller than 0.5 hectares. 

Operational Landholding Pattern in Bihar
Size (ha)	# (‘000)	% of total HHs	% operating HHs
nil	33824	28.95
<0.002	2024	1.7	2.4
0.002-0.005	5588	4.8	6.7
0.005-0.04	9387	8.0	11.3
0.04-0.5	36730	31.4	44.2
0.5-1.0	15646	13.4	18.8
Total	116853
Source: TableN-E NSS Report# 492, 2002-03, p.176

Please note that the extent of landlessness (in terms of land ownership) is most probably higher than these numbers suggest because here we are counting sharecroppers as operational holders even if they do not own any land and many of them do not. According to a World Bank survey in 1998, “nearly 25% of cultivated land in Bihar was leased-in. For small landholders (0.2-0.4 ha), leased-in land was as much as half the size of their average cultivable land; for SC/ST households around 80% of cultivated land was leased-in”.

I must say that I am shocked by these numbers.

Moving on from land ownership to subsistence status of rural Biharis. An average Bihari villager consumes about 150 kg of cereals per year; an average Bihari family of 5 needs about 750 kg/year. Per hectare crop yield of the rice-wheat system is about 2400 kg/ha of NSA (net sown area) in the state. This means that a typical farmer requires 0.33 ha of land to grow that much food. If he is a sharecropper, he needs to operate on twice as much land (0.66ha) to have 750 kg of food for his family consumption. We saw above that 75% of all rural households in Bihar operate no land or landholdings smaller than 0.5 ha. The incidence of extreme poverty is 46 to 56% among those who own less than 0.4 ha of land against the state average of 40%. These rough estimates show that 8.75 million of Bihar’s 11.7 million rural households are net buyers of food; they are the poorest and they will suffer heavily from the recent spike in food prices, at least in the short-run. [It does not help matters that Bihar has the most leaky public distribution system in India. ]

Part of the problem is the low crop yields and low cropping intensity in a high population density region. Bihar’s population grew faster in 1990s (by 28%) than in 1980s and there are signs that it is not slowing down even in the new millenium. The problem is that the increasing population density has not led to increase in land-use intensification. The prognosis of Malthus, not Boserup, is turning out to be true in Bihar and that is Bihar’s tragedy.

Where People have no (sur)Names

Apologies to U2 fans for the title. It refers to my home, Bihar. It is an irony that in a place like Bihar where caste-identities are so strong, markers of caste–the surnames or the family names–are seldom used. I never realized how unusual it was until i ventured out of the state for higher studies, first to Allahabad(UP) and later to the United States. I do not use Shahi, my family name, in official documents or in informal introductions. None of my classmates (except when they were Bengalis, Marwaris or Muslims) in Bihar used it either.

In high school in Allahabad, it was different. Only my name did not have family name prefixed to ti and many of my classmates thought that may be i was from so-called lower caste and was trying to hide it. In the US, my friends presume that Kishore is my family name and when I tell them that it is not and I do not use my family name at all, they are surprised too. They find it amusing when i tell them that a whole generation in my home state has givern up family names and it is common for the members of the same family  to have different last names.

Here in the US, Malcolm X ( who was Malcolm Little), Stokely Carmichael (who became Kwama Ture) and many other leaders and followers of Black Power changed their family names to disown the “slave names” or as in the later case to reemphasize his African roots. Watch here as Malcolm X explains why it was improper to use the old “slave-names”. This did not become the mainstream practice though.

What prompted Biharis to stop using their inherited family names? This may be an interesting questions for anthropologists or historians. I have not read anything on this. Unlike in the US, in Bihar the upper caste families who were privileged under the caste-system started the practice of not using family names. Why would they do so? My grandfather, who was one of the first in my extended family not to give family names to his kids, told me that  the trend started in 1940s among Congress leaders /workers as a symbolic first step towards creating a casteless society in Bihar. India’s freedom movement was rich with such symbolism. In those days, Congress leaders where often the most educated and respected members of the society. They were the trendsetters and what they did was soon followed by most people. So, the new naming convention became popular. 

Over the next two decades, casteism only became stronger. Earlier, caste was more about identity and ritual superiority.  After independence, as the political power came in the hands of the Indians the caste struggles were about political power and control over the state apparatus. Higher stakes meant uglier caste rivalries. Three decades long bitter political rivalry between the Bhumihaar leader Sri Krishna Singh and the Rajput leader Anugraha Narayana Singh is stuff of the legends in Bihar. The rivalry continued after them, only in more blatant and naked forms.  In 1950s and 1960s people avoided using family names for the fear of bias and discrimination by fellows of other castes. There are horror stories of what misfortunes your family name could bring to you from total strangers in an interview or in the marking of your exam books. These stories may be apocryphal but people believed in them and did not want to take an unnecessary risk. 

Now, it is neither the inspiration to create a casteless society nor the fear of caste discrimination that motivates people not to give their family names to their kids. It is just the convention in Bihar and to do otherwise is to be old-fashioned, traditional or even reactionary. In and of itself, I think using or not using family names does not make any real difference to people’s lives. It is not even a real issue but it tells us something about Bihar’s post-independce politics where something starting as a lofty gesture towards undoing the problem of casteism eventually became (an ineffective) coping mechanism as the problem worsened and society remained unprepared and unwilling to take any meaningful action.