Singh: People?s hero

Bagodar, Jan. 15: For fifteen years nobody from Khambra, or from villages around it, went to the Bagodar police station to lodge any complaint, recalls Rajendra Singh. But the record, he sadly adds, was broken in February last year, less than a month after Mahendra Singh was killed. Adds Shobha Devi: ?No young man from Khambra and around migrates any longer to look for work. They have enough to do in the village.?

Both of them will turn out tomorrow to pay tributes to Mahendra Singh, the CPI(M-L) leader who was assassinated on January 16 last year. Some 30,000 people had then turned up to attend the funeral of Singh, who represented Bagodar for three consecutive terms in Bihar and thereafter the Jharkhand Assembly. An even larger crowd is expected to converge at Bagodar tomorrow. Last year on this day they mourned his death. Tomorrow they will celebrate his work.

The Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) is yet to crack the case, though they were said to be at sniffing distance from the assassins. But while there is anger, and resignation, among the people, they genuinely seem to miss the legislator.

It does not take long to see why. The six-kilometre-long approach road to Khambra, 75 km from Giridih, is as smooth as a national highway. There are irrigation facilities in the villages and power. The school and the health centre are both functional and ?different?. There are community halls and above all, a functioning gram sabha in every village of the area though Jharkhand remains the only state where panchayat elections are yet to be held.

Tomorrow, a statue of the late leader will be unveiled at the Kisan Bhavan, following which a procession through Bagodar will culminate in a rally at the newly constructed stadium here. A cultural function will be the concluding highlight of the day, when a film shot on Singh?s life will also be screened.