A village seen through an economist’s filter in Luc Leruth with Jean Dreze’s Rumble in a Village

Harvinder Khetal

The myriad escapades of the NRI protagonist, Anil Singh, who lands in his ancestral village of Palanpur in Uttar Pradesh following an unexpected inheritance — and, goaded by his transcendental meditation-loving Indophile girlfriend Pat — begin with the dramatic revelation that his Uncle, who had bequeathed him the property, had been murdered. The trials and tribulations of the motley crowd of rural characters threaded into the rumble of the whodunit that is enmeshed in a compelling socio-economic chronicle project the deep caste and pelf divide ripping society like a sharp knife.

This is the storyline of the novel, ‘Rumble in a Village’. Lending a sense of historical credibility to it is the fact that for the story, author Luc Leruth has dipped into the rich repository of notes jotted down by Jean Dreze, Belgian-born Indian economist and co-author with Amartya Sen (‘Hunger and Public Action’), during his stay in Palanpur as a researcher in 1983-84. Nearly four decades later, Leruth, his fellow alumnus from New Delhi’s Indian Statistical Institute, professor and writer, has penned a breezy fictional tale.

Well-rounded characters have been conjured up to people a quaint village (name retained as Palanpur). Their life and milieu reflect the social, cultural and political mores of a rural setting in the north-west India of the time.

The London-bred Anil seeks to understand the place by delving into the copious notes that his father had written about their native country, covering three generations of forefathers.

Thus, an arc spanning almost a century with historical allusions oscillates between Anil’s amalgamation into India and his father’s descriptive account of the British times and independence from colonial rule. Anil’s valiant attempt at farming foiled by a failed monsoon is relatable even today.

Lending a riveting movement of time in the juxtaposition of the old and the new are the metaphors of the railway and Anil’s amateurish attempts at photography with a hi-tech Nikon — for a prospective coffee table book.

The humour offers a welcome relief from the portrayal of a dreary village life. It is best illustrated in the advent of the train in Palanpur in 1872.

The amazed, wide-eyed villagers are apprehensive of the impending machine that the engineer says “would be large, quick, puff, and make loud noises.”

“‘How fast is the monster? Like a horse?’

‘Faster!’

‘Like lightning?’

The engineer smiled.

‘Like sound,’ he responded as seriously as he could, well aware that this far exceeded what the robust 4-6-0 Sharp, Stewart and Company of Leeds could achieve, even with a double boiler.”

The toil of men and women, accompanying bullock-driven carts, as they make a bed of stones and wooden beams to receive tracks through the village is evocatively described as a harsh ballet. As the engine moves forth on the emerging rail line, it leaves the unmistakable imprint of the Englishmen’s famed obsession with stations and timetables.

The one point reinforced is the power wielded by the dominant castes, Thakurs and Muraos, and the usurping moneylenders. It is evident in the implication in murder of a Dalit woman named Neetu — without a shred of evidence. Then, her son’s ill-treatment by the authorities and upper castes and disdainful dismissal as “Chamar”, starkly exhibit the injustice.

The other thread running in this charming collaboration between one economist’s prosaic view and another one’s fertile imagination is the rich-poor chasm. The momentous transformation in Palanpur’s growth with the train chugging in comes through clearly. The Palanpuris quickly adapt to live in harmony with the train (after a few accidents) and flourish as they provide tea, snacks and bananas and other services to the travellers; a British supervisor wanting an elaborate chicken dish — for a price unheard of — is also supposed to have left satisfied and happy.

The sweep to Anil’s mingling with the villagers and attempts to modernise the village paint a colourful rural face of the 1980s, marked by a morass of relationships mired in jealousy, red-tapism, corruption, friendship and compassion.

Replace the train of the 19th century with the Internet of the 21st century and one can see another quantum jump in lifestyle.