Dog Blogs Travel Trips

A coal blackened board welcomes us as we drive through "Desh ki Koyla Rajdhani - Dhanbad". Coal and Capital. Our country's current obsession. Just a few people shy of complete coverage of human rights issues in all of Jharkhand's 24 districts, a colleague (at the time snoozing on the back seat) and I were Travel-Tripping across the state, reconnecting with the many friends and associates we have acquired in our many years of IndiaUnheard in Jharkhand. The road from Ranchi took us through Hazaribag, onto the broken roads of Bengal, past the "prestigious" Maithon dam (which by the way, displaced thousands of the native people, most of whom are still homeless migrants), right on through the steady, stoic hills of the Santhal Pargana, into Dumka. Dumka is one of many Coal Cities across Jharkhand, complete with its unique kind of inadequate infrastructure suffering from wave after wave of migrants. Every chai tapri at the main bus stop has filthy,...

What happens when you bring together some activists, school girls, unemployed youth and poor farmers? A revolution. A rebellion against the rules . There is hope in this world yet. As the outside world is carried away by greed, jealousy, rage and power, I have been camping in Bagaicha, Ranchi with this group of people who have lost homes, families, land and identities and are struggling to bring together their communities in a new age rebellion against the consumer world that you and I are a part of. Over days of chatting with them and finally hounding them for follow ups it began to dawn on me who I was trying to understand, to connect with. These were the people our government forgot when they were making the rules, the laws that govern our nation. There were people desperately fighting for a chance of survival, fighting for their land, their forests, their culture…for their communities. Reaching Bagaicha on the 17 th , the first thing I did was make friends with Spotty aka ‘C...