¹ See Dwaipayan Bhattacharyya (2009), Of control and factions: The changing ‘Party-society’ in rural West Bengal, Economic and Political Weekly, Vol. XLIV (9), 28 February, p. 59.

² See Bhattacharyya (2009), Of control and factions, p. 59.

³ See Sekhar Bandyopadhyay (2004), Caste, Culture and Hegemony: Social Domination in Colonial Bengal, Sage Publications, New Delhi, p. 247.

⁴ See Mary Searle Chatterjee and Urshula Sharma (Eds) (1994), Contextualizing Caste, Blackwell Publishers/The Sociological Review, UK, pp. 1–25; Srinivas, M. N. (2003), An obituary on caste as a system, Economic and Political Weekly, 38 (5), 1 February, pp. 455–459Google Scholar; and Gupta, Dipankar (2005), Caste and politics: Identity over system, Annual Review of Anthropology, 21, pp. 409–427CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

⁵ See Srinivas, An obituary on a caste as a system, p. 455.

⁶ See Ghosh, Anjan (1994), ‘Caste and Kulaks in Eastern India: A comparison of Bihar, Orissa and West Bengal’ in Sharma, K. L. (Ed.), Caste and Class in India, Rawats Publications, Joypur, pp. 141–152Google Scholar.

⁷ Panchayat is the village level basic unit of administration in the three-tier system of governance i.e. panchayat raj institution meant for decentralization of power in the rural areas.

⁸ Kalipur and Kadampur are fictitious names of two study villages located in Dhaniakhali and Singur blocks respectively in the Hooghly district of West Bengal, an Indian state. The author spent more than a year in these two villages carrying out ethnographic field work during 2006–2007 towards her Doctoral thesis.

⁹ The share-cropper or bargadar is a tenant who borrows land for cultivation from landlords or other landholding classes in return for a share of the crops produced on the land.

¹⁰ The Left Front government launched a programme called ‘Operation Barga’ in 1978 under which the government functionaries would record the names of the bargadars to ensure them greater tenure security and protection against the threat of eviction This programme achieved startling results as around 1.2 million share-croppers, around 65–70 per cent of the total number of bargadars in the state, registered their names in the first three years.

¹¹ The West Bengal Land Reforms Act stipulates that a bargadar should give one-fourth of the crop to the landowner when the cost of production is entirely borne by the share-cropper, and half the crop in the case of the landowner sharing half the cost of production. But in these villages, like many other villages in West Bengal, the amount of share that the bargadars offered was one-third of the produced crop even thought the landowner did not share any cost in production. This practice probably came about because of the ignorance of the share-croppers about their rights as sanctioned by law, and the reluctance of government and organized parties to implement the law.

¹² The agricultural labourers, whom the author met in Kalipur, all expressed their grievances over the lack of employment available in the village. They reported that in a year they used to get hardly 90–100 days work in agriculture.

¹³ See Srinivas, An obituary on a caste as a system, p. 456.

¹⁴ See Srinivas, M. N. (1966), Social Change in Modern India, Allied Publisher, Bombay, p. 19Google Scholar.

¹⁵ Lower castes like the Napits, Kamars, Kumors, or Muchis had to serve the upper castes during ritual practices and rites or ceremonies. By serving the upper castes, the lower castes followed their traditional past, sometimes under compulsion. One Napit woman said: ‘My sons are very reluctant to serve the upper castes on their rituals and ceremonies. They feel ashamed to perform it and take the payment in kinds that are usually offered to them. But it is our duty to serve them in various ceremonies and rites. If my sons are not able to serve them, we have to manage the job by arranging another Napit from outside the village.’ Interestingly, one of her two sons was running a hair-cutting saloon in a nearby town.

¹⁶ See Singh, K. S. (1993), People of India: An introduction, Seagull, Calcutta, p. 79Google Scholar.

¹⁷ See Broomfield, J. H. (1968), Elite Conflict in a Plural Society: Twentieth-Century Bengal, University of California Press, USA, pp. 5–9Google Scholar; Chatterjee, Partha (1997), The Present History of West Bengal: Essays in Political Criticism, Oxford University Press, New Delhi, pp. 70–71Google Scholar; and Mukherjee, S. N. (1993), Calcutta: Essays in Urban History, Subarnarekha, Calcutta, pp. 72–79Google Scholar.

¹⁸ Here bhadra means gentle, loks means people.

¹⁹ See Mukherjee, S. N. (1993), Calcutta: Essays in Urban History, Subarnarekha, Calcutta, pp. 72–79Google Scholar.

²⁰ See again Broomfield, Elite Conflict in Plural Society, pp. 5–6.

²¹ The central government had set a couple of programmes like the Rajiv Gandhi National Drinking Water Mission (RGNDWM), Sajaldhara and Total Sanitation Campaign (TSC), to ensure drinking water and sanitation services to all the citizens of India. The left front government of West Bengal has also set the agenda for improving the core civic services by the panchayats in its various documents. (See for example, ‘Roadmap for the Panchayats in West Bengal: A vision Document’, published by Panchayat and Rural Development Department, Government of West Bengal, 2009.)

²² See Sanyal, Hiteshranjan (1981), Social Mobility in Bengal, Papyrus, Calcutta, p. 38Google Scholar.

²³ See again Sanyal, Social Mobility in West Bengal, p. 38. These three castes are also called asprishya-sudra in the caste hierarchy of Bengal as defined by Risley who states: ‘In Bengal the castes are divided into two main groups: 1) the Brahmins and 2) the Sudras. The latter is further divided into four subclasses indicating their status as regards food and water: a) the sat sudra group includes such castes as the Kayastha and nabasakhas, b) then come the jalacharaniya-sudras, being those castes not technically belonging to nabasakha group, from whom Brahmins and members of the higher castes can take water, c) then follow the jalbyabahariya-sudras, castes from whose hands a Brahman cannot take water, d) last stands the asprishya sudra caste whose touch is so impure as to pollute even the Ganges water and their contact must be avoided. They are thus the untouchables’. (Risley, 1891, II: 270) as quoted by G. S. Ghurye in ‘Features of the caste system’ in Dipankar Gupta (Ed.), Social Stratification.

²⁴ See Sanyal, Social Mobility in Bengal, p. 27. Sanyal states, ‘If they [lower castes] are allowed to join the religious and social functions in the village they are constrained to remain at the most disadvantageous position in the gathering’.

²⁵ Sholo ana meant something belonging to the whole village community. Hence, in the sholo ana festival all the communities had equal rights to participate. But it did not happen previously, when upper caste domination was more explicit in the village. But in the contemporary period, with the assertion of the lower castes in different fields, they could no more be segregated from the sholo ana festivals.

²⁶ See Sanyal, Social Mobility in Bengal, p. 26.

²⁷ Sanyal, Social Mobility in Bengal, describes that the Brahmins of Bengal are divided between two major categories, namely, clean and unclean. A clean Brahman will fall from the high position if he acts as the priest in the house or temple of a person belonging to the unclean Sudra castes. The unclean Brahman serving the unclean Sudras are known as Varna Brahman.

²⁸ Quoted from Srinivas, M. N. (1991), ‘The Dominant Caste in Rampura’, in Gupta, Dipankar (Ed.) (1991), Social Stratification, Oxford University Press, Delhi, p. 310Google Scholar.

²⁹ Integrated Child Development Scheme (ICDS) is a Central Government scheme for every village with six goals: to provide nutrition, immunization, health checks, identification of handicapped children at the initial stage, providing pre-primary informal education, and education on health and nutrition.

³⁰ The children are served eggs once weekly in the ICDS centre of rural West Bengal. That day is commonly called ‘egg-day’ by the staff and rural people. The centre becomes crowded on egg-day and the attendance of the children in the centre is high. Even the parents of the absentee children gather in front of the centre to collect eggs due for their children.

³¹ Anjan Ghosh (2001), ‘Cast(e) out in West Bengal’, Seminar, 508, December.

³² The names of the characters that appear in the following pages are fictitious to protect true identities.

³³ See Ruud, Arild Engelsen (2003), Poetics of village politics: The making of West Bengal rural communism, Oxford University Press, New DelhiGoogle Scholar.

³⁴ The state government decided to acquire nearly 1,000 acres of agricultural land in Singur for a small car plant to be set up by Tata Motors. Almost the whole village agricultural land of Kadampur fell under the proposed industrial area. The villagers had been agitating against this acquisition when I visited the area.

³⁵ Jatra is a kind a traditional drama acted on an open stage. This kind of play has always been very popular in the villages of West Bengal.

³⁶ See Shah, Ghanashyam (Ed.) (2002), Caste and Democratic Politics in India, Permanent Black, Delhi, p. 8Google Scholar. Shah argues, by referring to Srinivas (1952), ‘Though the upper castes try to maintain their higher status, the middle and lower castes have successfully improved status. With improvement of their economic condition, a dominant section of some of the low castes – including groups that were at one time treated as untouchables—imitated the customs and norms of the upper castes residing in their vicinity’. See also Srinivas (1952), Religion and Society among the Coorgs of South India, Oxford University Press, Bombay.

³⁷ Even after the promulgation of the Land Reform Act (1955) during the Congress regime, the rural gentry retained much of the above-ceiling land through evasive transfers to relatives, friends and fictitious persons. This land was popularly termed ‘benami land’ (The land without real names of the owners). After the installation of successive United Front governments in West Bengal in the late-1960s, a peasant movement broke out in many parts of West Bengal principally to reclaim these benami lands so far held by the landlords through their connection with the administration and the political leaders in power. The Communist Party of India (Marxist) became popular amongst the poor in the countryside by leading this movement.

³⁸ The history of the village Kalipur is closely knotted with the neighbouring village Madhupur. The two villages have traditionally been so interlinked with each other that the social dynamics of one village can not be explored without considering the situation prevailing in the other village.

³⁹ Marginal—below one hectare (ha), small—1 ha and above but less than 2 ha, semi medium—2 ha and above, but less than 4 ha, medium—4 ha and above, but less than 10 ha, large—10 ha and above. See Government of West Bengal, 2004. District Statistical Handbook, Hooghly, BAES, p. 102.

⁴⁰ The resentment of the villagers against corrupted ration dealers broke into violent agitations in the rural areas, mostly in the Communist Party of India (Marxist)-dominated south Bengal districts, in the year 2007 and was widely reported in the news media. In many such cases of agitation, the ruling party leaders and panchayat officials became the target of peoples’ wrath.

⁴¹ The 73^rd amendment (1993) of the constitution made reservation for Scheduled Caste, tribal and women mandatory in the three-tier panchayati raj institutions. According to the amendment, the number of seats to be reserved for the Scheduled Caste and tribal would be determined according to the proportion of population of Scheduled Caste and tribal to the total number of population in that constituency. One-third of the reserved seats for Scheduled Caste and tribal will be reserved for the women of the aforesaid communities. Apart from this, one-third of the total seats of the three-tier panchayats must be reserved for the women (including the seats reserved for the Scheduled Caste and tribal women). Notably, no seat will be reserved permanently; rather the seats will be rotationally reserved for Scheduled Caste, tribal and the women. The seats of the pradhans (chief of the gram panchayat), sabhapatis (president of the panchayat samiti) and sabhadhipatis (president of zilla parishad) will also be reserved for Scheduled Caste, tribal and women by an Act passed by the West Bengal State Assembly.

⁴² To ensure universal literacy the government formed the Village Education Committee (VEC) under the direction of Sarba Shikhsa Abhiyan (SSA). The SSA is a programme of Central Government of India for Universal Elementary Education. The tasks of the VEC are to enhance the enrolment of students and oversee the quality of learning in village schools.

⁴³ The Village Development Committee (VDC), or Gram Unnayan Samiti, is a statutory body to be elected through the gram sansand (village council) meeting and is empowered to look after all the development works being undertaken in a gram sansad area under the auspices of the panchayat.

⁴⁴ Branch committee is the lowest level unit in the party structure of the Communist Party of India (Marxist), operating generally in 2 or 3 villages.

⁴⁵ Harihar Bhattacharya argues, ‘panchayats have failed to become the centre of people's power; it is just another centre for party power in the state.’ See Bhattacharya, Harihar (1998), Micro Foundations of Bengal Communism, Ajanta Books International, Delhi, pp. 179–180Google Scholar.

⁴⁶ Sukanta Bhattacharyya had conducted a study on the basis of field work in a village of Burdwan in June–August, 1993. His study reveals that ‘the numerical strength of the lower castes and lower classes has been established at the level of panchayat and other organizations. But at the leadership level, concentration of power is found in the hands of middle peasantry.’ See Sukanta Bhattacharya (2003), Caste, Class and Politics in West Bengal: Case Study of a Village in Burdwan, Economic and Political Weekly, 18 January, p. 246.

⁴⁷ Trinamool Congress party (TMC) is a breakaway party from the Congress party, formed in 1998 which subsequently emerged as the main opposition party in West Bengal.

⁴⁸ See Chatterjee, The Present History of West Bengal, p. 83.

⁴⁹ Bose, Pradip Kumar (1991), ‘Mobility and Conflict: Social Roots of Caste Violence in Bihar’ in Gupta, Dipankar (Ed.), Social Stratification, Oxford University Press, Delhi, p. 370Google Scholar.