An encounter this writer once had in a ?Harijan hostel? had left him shaken. Just about 20 years ago, soon after Jagjivan Ram died, this newspaper decided to run a series on the ?state of the Harijans? and this correspondent was given the responsibility of covering Palamau. Along with Gaya, Palamau has one of the highest concentration of Scheduled Castes and yet the Harijans were a marginalised lot, left at the receiving end of more powerful babu sahebs (Rajputs) and the Brahmins.

Brahmins and Rajputs of Palamau used to live in the middle ages, more like feudal warlords. Their word was law and they would strut around with firearms as people now do with cell phones. They would kill without reason and derive immense satisfaction from humiliating Harijans. Indeed, they derived their disproportionate power over people by a display of firepower at their disposal. This writer recalls a meeting with the brother of former Tamil Nadu governor, Bhishma Narayan Singh, on the verandah of his relatively modest house in Palamau. On the large table was placed casually a disconcerting number of firearms in place of crokery.

Getting back to the Harijan hostel at Daltonganj, it was a hostel where most of the students were studying in colleges and some were engaged in postgraduate studies. We were discussing the state of Harijans and all of them solemnly agreed that their plight remained bad.

But things must be improving, I suggested, with the state government pumping in money, building hostels and giving scholarships? A pregnant pause that followed was broken by the shrill cry of one of the students, who dared this correspondent to visit his village and see things for himself.

And then, inexplicably, he started crying. It took time and effort to calm him down and extract the story slowly. He and a few of his friends, the student recalled, wanted to set up a primary school for Harijan children. There was a government school in the village, with two teachers deployed there. But both the teachers lived in an outhouse of a local Rajput landlord and they were firmly told to confine their teaching to the children of the babu sahebs.

When word got out that the Harijans were planning a school of their own, the student claimed, a group of angry Rajputs arrived in the Harijan part of the village and started firing in the air. After sufficiently intimidating the people, they rudely told the cowering Harijans that they should forget about the school. What good would education do to them, they asked. Before leaving, they left the Harijans with a crude reminder. ?The scrotum, even when it swells, remains below the penis,? they hollered and left after hurling the insult. The students agreed that neither Brahmins nor Rajputs had much of an inhibition in bedding good-looking Harijan women. Some of the more powerful men would even casually ask a Harijan to send his wife, sister or daughter that night. But it was beneath their station to socialise with Harijans.

Did Harijan hostels help? It must have made a difference by allowing some of the more determined and talented Harijans to escape the tyranny, find more liberal sanctuaries and get educated. Similarly, ?Adivasi hostels? also must have benefitted a lot of students. But the flip side is that by segregating the SCs and STs, we probably allowed the chasm to remain, if not widen. It would have been a more healthy practice if students were allowed to live together and enjoy similar facilities. The government could pay for some of them, who cannot afford it. But segregating them into ghettos is a bad idea and it is time we put a stop to it.

What the government and the universities need to do is to visualise modern hostel facilities, which will include a washing machine and a hot-plate on every floor, a photo-copier and a computer-room, a common room with television sets and a pleasant ambience that is conducive for studies. It does not cost too much to maintain lawns, plant trees and flowers and offer facilities for both indoor games and outdoor sports. Let they be the models that inspire more such hostels in other parts of the state. There should be hostel complexes with women?s wings too round the corner. Such hostels planned today, and executed in the next few years, could then lead to a more harmonious and healthy society a decade and a half later. Having messed up the state, this is the least we owe to the next generation.