While the Prime Minister and other members of his party continue to seek attention by cheekily referring to themselves as ‘Chowkidar’ with the ‘Main Bhi Chowkidar’ campaign, 10,000 actual chowkidars in the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP)-ruled state of Jharkhand are protesting because they haven’t been paid their salaries in the last four months.
According to a report by Vijay Deo Jha in The Telegraph, the affected chowkidars held an hour-long silent protest at Ratu police station, Ranchi, on Tuesday, March 19. Reportedly, across 24 districts in the state, each chowkidar monitors 10 villages under one police station and has a salary of Rs. 20,000 a month. Their salaries are due for the past four months. The report added that even the 200 dafadars, whom the chowkidars report to, have not been paid for the past four months. The dafadars earn around Rs 22,000 a month.
President of Jharkhand Rajya Dafadar Chowkidar Panchayat, Krishna Dayal Singh, told the Telegraph that at a time the whole country was talking about the Main Bhi Chowkidar campaign, chowkidars of the state had not received their salaries.
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“When Prime Minister Narendra Modi identified himself as chowkidar and later started the Main Bhi Chowkidar campaign, we felt proud that somebody recognised this neglected section of administration. But the fact is that our salaries are always delayed. Why should we always suffer? I want to know whether the salary of chief minister Raghubar Das, chief secretary Sudhir Tripathi and all other officials has ever been delayed by a single day,” Singh is quoted a saying.
Singh reportedly added that that chowkidars and dafadars do the ground work for the Indian policing system. They keep a check on on anti-social elements, witness incidents first-hand a lot of times and help police prevent crime. “We are exposed to threats because our identities are obvious,” he said, pointing out that they will not be receiving salaries before Holi. “Even in districts where funds have been allowed, no one will get salaries before Holi (Thursday, March 21) because we all know that paperwork takes time. We are forced to borrow money from moneylenders to run our families,” he told The Telegraph.
Another Ranchi-based chowkidar Ram Kishun Gope’s account is even more shocking. He reportedly said that while their job was to keep track of activities in their areas and collect intelligence reports from the ground to inform the police, they were often forced to work as attendants at the homes of “seniors”. “Respect is lacking nowadays,” he is quoted as saying. He added that in 2014, 600 chowkidars appointed in the Bihar era on the basis of the age-old hereditary tradition, were sacked, reported The Telegraph.
BJP’s ‘Main Bhi Chowkidar’ campaign is being called out by various people across the society. With party leaders of prefixing ‘Chowkidar’ before their names on social media accounts, there is massive criticism coming their way, mostly pointing to the hypocrisy of this privileged lot.
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