Malti Murmu in Sahebganj. Picture by Gautam Dey

Sahebganj, July 5: Santhals have visibly been reduced to a minority in large parts of this district. Manjhikola, eight km from the district headquarters, is the only Santhal village in the Sahebganj district and they are clearly an unhappy lot.

What is striking is the continued stranglehold of money-lenders in this region, 150 years after the Santhal uprising and 30 years after Shibu Soren spearheaded a movement against money-lenders, virtually all of whom are non-adivasis and outsiders.

Malti Murmu is now 65 years old. When she was nine, in 1951, if she is to be believed, her parents borrowed Rs 25 and just four kg of foodgrain from Rajkumar Burnwal. In return, the family was forced to mortgage 12 bighas of land till they repaid the loan.

Her son, Nimai, approached the subdivisional magistrate of Sahebganj in 2002 and sought the government?s intervention to get his land restored as per the Santhal Pargana Tenancy Act. He recalls paying Rs 2,500 to the babus (under the law he is to spend just 25 paise for the official form) and producing a copy of the record of rights. But he has not heard anything from the officials since then. The resigned son reflects, ?perhaps the Burnwals influenced the officials.?

Malti and her five sons are forced to eke out a living by working at stone-crushing units. But most of the crushers depend on electricity and the erratic power situation has blocked even this means of livelihood. She has a smaller, six bigha plot adjoining the village. But the family took a loan of Rs 720 in 1996 from Shamsul Master, following an outbreak of malaria. Malti, a grandmother of 15 children, had no option but to take the loan after several children fell ill that year.

She produces a plain paper, which indicates that the yield from the six-bigha plot would accrue to the money-lender between 1996 and 2007.

It has no legal validity and in any case such exorbitant rates of interest are illegal in the eyes of the law. But Malti Murmu, mother of five, has no clue how to get out of this vicious circle.