Jhumri Telaiya
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As in 2024
ASRP.Mukesh & Manoj Kumar, May 16, 2024: The Times of India
From: ASRP.Mukesh & Manoj Kumar, May 16, 2024: The Times of India
Koderma : Decades before the state of Jharkhand was carved out of Bihar in 2000, Jhumri-Tilaiya, a subdivisional town in Koderma district in the undivided state, had hit national headlines owing to its connection with popular radio stations such as Radio Ceylon and Vividh Bharati, with listeners from the town flooding presenters with requests for popular Bollywood numbers.
As Koderma gets ready for LS polls on May 20, Jhumri-Tilaiya, which falls under the Koderma seat has emerged as a case study for a decadent socio-political order that evokes more sighs than hurrahs — quite like those sepia-toned images in a dust-coated photo album, carelessly tucked away in the inner recesses of a creaky drawer or shelf.
Unlike those ‘Binaca Geet Mala’ nights on Radio Ceylon, hosted by the legendary Ameen Sayani, when the town’s name would be mentioned frequently as the celebrated presenter played one chartbuster after another, present-day Jhumri-Tilaiya is no more than a footnote as far as Jharkhand politics goes.
Around the same time when the Sayani baritone ruled airwaves across the country, the mica industry in Bihar was in full bloom. JhumriTilaiya was then home to all kinds of foreign cars and mansions, old timers recall.
However, the gradual decline of the mica industry from the 1990s onwards led to joblessness, migration, and an overall decay — not just in Jhumri-Tilaiya, but in the entire Koderma district.
Ironical as it is, despite housing the Koderma Thermal Power Station (KTPS), the entire region is starved of power. Koderma’s potential tourist attractions, such as the scenic Tilaiya dam, no longer draw visitors. The town’s location near major roads such as National Highway 2 and the Grand Trunk Road has not even done lip service to its socioeconomic cause, with residents perennially struggling to access even the very basic necessities such as water, electricity and healthcare. While a handful of the sub-divisional town’s dusty, semi-urban pockets bear signs of sporadic commercial growth with a few swank eateries and retail outlets, residents must still travel to Hazaribagh or Ranchi or to neighbouring cities and towns of Bihar in search of better healthcare and education.
One can just go on and on with a laundry list of these grievances, though sitting BJP MP Annapurna Devi believes the constituency still ticks most of the boxes in terms of its development journey. She points to upcoming hospitals at Markachho and Domchanch blocks in Koderma, and a planned nursing college and critical-care centre at Karma Medical College to substantiate her point.
On the contentious issues of migration, unemployment, and the distressed mica mining industry, her counterclaim is that the state govt under JMM has failed to address these problems.
Her views draw a sharp retort from her rival and INDIA bloc candidate Vinod Singh. “Despite being an MLA and MP for close to two decades, she (Annapurna) doesn’t have anything to count as her achievement in Koderma,” he said.
Speaking about the downfall of the mica mining industry, Chandan Barnwal, now in his 60s, said: “The mica industry’s downfall began in the 1980s, when govt introduced the forest protection law. Thereafter, the then Bihar govt formed the Mica Mining Trading Corporation (MMTC), allowing only export-import of the mineral,” Chandan said.
Two generations of Pradeep Bhadani’s family were into mica mining. Pradeep himself owns a petrol pump on the Tilaiya-Koderma road. Yet, his children migrated in search of better prospects. “Once there used to be at least 700 industries related to mica and allied services, employing lakhs of people. Today, 95% of that industry has perished,” Pradeep rued.
Barely 2km away from the residence of incumbent MP Annapurna Devi lies Phulmaria village. It’s a hamlet inhabited by around 300 households, including 39 families of the Birhor community (a Particularly Vulnerable Tribal Group). For these villagers, piped water and electricity continue to be distant dreams.
Munia Birhor, a resident of Phulmaria, said the villagers have to trek four to five kms daily on the hilly terrain to source water and wood. “We do get ration, but don’t have the money to refill the cooking gas cylinders,” she remarked, pointing to a gas stove that she had received under the PM Ujjwala scheme a couple of years back.
