This piece is only for Biharis and others who live and behave like Biharis. Biharis of all sorts will have a memory of Chabhacha Chowk in their hometowns and districts headquarters. To begin with, chabhacha is a place which is muddy, slushy and full of kichad (mud) and stagnant water where equality reigns supreme. Everyone - the rich and the poor alike - has to negotiate this on their way to some place and to some other place. True, it is more difficult to pass through a chabhacha for a pedestrian or a cyclist than a car-owner or mobike-rider. You might think that a chabhacha is a seasonal occurrence and may appear only during the rains. You are totally mistaken. Rains apart, in most parts of Bihar, drains do not have much to do with its primary function of draining out excess water, that is, drainage. Rather, nala (drains) appear as cemented appendage to roads and have no obligation to roads as such. Indeed, they do serve a public function as pedestrians’ footpath. In public imagination, cemented drains mean development. So routinely, funds get allotted for their construction, tenders get floated, contractors get awarded work contracts and drains do get built. But you will hardly find these drains connected with one another to carry excess water to some designated stream, pond, canal or the like. First of all, their design ensures that excess water submerges the nearby road than enter the drain. Secondly, we use them to dump all kinds of garbage and rubbish so that a blocked drain is as ubiquitous as a functioning one. Thirdly, the local dominants frequently treat these drains as annexe of their front yard and to extend their family operations on to them. Such activities are as true for a village as for a town.
Lack of co-ordination between road construction and drain construction departments apart, we are in a way totally indifferent to these chabhachas as they are our creation. Most of us derive sensual pleasure in throwing out our garbage on the nearby roads and treat them as our own soaking pit. We frequently block the outlet of a functioning hand pipe by making our surroundings higher in elevation so that a permanent chabhacha gets created almost everywhere there a hand pipe. Go to any village or the so-called residential colony in a small town. You will see a fierce competition among house builders/owners to beat their neighbours down by making their plinths higher than theirs. This is a classic case of a private solution to a public problem!
At times, I marvel at people’s patience with, or rather their indifference to chabhachas. As they battle more and more chabhachas in their daily life, they appear drunk on the idea of a state-of-the-art bus stand that may come up soon in their towns. In fact, most bus stands in Bihar are nothing more than chabhachas of varying degrees and kinds. But optimism prevails. One might slip there catching a bus, break one’s legs, dirty their clothes but would never protest against the authorities. Is this quietist attitude our civilisational legacy? Or, do we really not care for better civic amenities: better roads, better drains, better bus stands, better travel experience, better parks, better lighting and overall, a better quality of life?
For almost a decade now, I keep hearing of the imminent construction of a modern bust depot at Darbhanga’s Delhi More. And, every quarter of a year I pass by it and see it expanding as a chabhacha. The same story may hold true for your town/village/block/district. We all know that Biharis migrate to other places in large numbers. As migrants they would certainly have experienced better public infrastructure in places where they live and work. Would it be unjustified on their part to carry back the desire of comparable levels of public infrastructure when they return to their home state? If not, then why is it that such demands do not get articulated in a politically significant way? Why is it that we have made peace with chabhachas even when we buy best tiles for our homes? Why is it that we never allow a village nala to pass through our dalan even when it means that almost on an everyday basis, we have to put our feet in the mud and slush of a chabhacha to whose making we have contributed in no small measure.
At one level, chabhachas are public policy failures and reflect the poor quality of governance and service delivery. Equally, they are symptomatic of our attitude towards what we consider to be public and the private. More often than not, we are willing to leave no stone unturned to make our private lives better. We tend to forget that the quality of our private lives is deeply intertwined with public concerns. Without realising these interconnections, we keep chasing our own private dreams rendering our public interventions patchy and infructuous. Almost six decades back, the American sociologist C. Wright Mills urged us to see the connect between our private troubles and public issues. As Indians, we need to remind ourselves of that insight to get rid of chabhachas of all kinds, both literally and metaphorically!
*Manish Thakur teaches sociology at the Indian Institute of Management Calcutta.
