February 14, Baghdogra.

We started the day by meeting R. Rama Swamy the principal staff officer of the Border Security Force (BSF) Kadam Tala. Our host was highly supportive of our mission and arranged for accommodation at various BSF officers mess’ en route to Kolkata. After the meeting we proceeded to Siliguri town (15 km) to leave our battered-on-Bihar-roads TVS Apaches for servicing. Since there is not much to see in Siliguri, a trading town we returned to the BSF officers mess in Baghdogra.

February 15, Baghdogra.

We took delivery of the bikes and decided to test ride them around the bustling business town of Siliguri. The crowded, narrow roads of Siliguri where every roadster believes he has the right of road, was not the most pleasurable experience. In the evening we bought an external data card (Rs.3,800) to get seamless internet access on our Intel Ultra Mobile PC (UMPC). But despite the Reliance data card the UMPC presented some problems which I could not diagnose, and we were unable to log on to the internet.

February 16, Baghdogra-Jaigaon via Haldibari.

On a day which proved memorable for us, we started off at 8.00 a.m and proceeded towards Jaigaon, the Indo-Bhutan border town. Stopping at Siliguri to fuel up we met Premananda Roy, vice president of DISA (Development Initiative for Social Advancement) who invited us to their anniversary celebrations at Manikganj village, Haldibari Tehsil on the Indo-Bangladesh border. Trailing his car through the back roads of West Bengal, we passed through some of the remotest villages of the country. Though the CPM (Communist Party of India-Marxist) which has ruled West Bengal since 1977 claims to have uplifted rural Bengal, except for good quality roads, nothing in these villages seems to have changed for the better. Houses are makeshift bamboo huts, most villages don’t have schools, running water or electricity. People eke out a living through agriculture and inland fishery.

Education provision is pathetic in these border areas. A single government primary school serves 17 villages. This lacuna is being filled in an effective way by DISA (see EW, March p. 14). We spent the entire day participating in the anniversary celebrations of DISA, visiting their project sites and learning centres and interacting with resource persons, teachers and volunteers. By the time we started from Manikganj towards the Jaigaon (India)-Phuntsoling (Bhutan) border it was 5.00 p.m. It took us about four hours of riding in the night through Dalgaon, Birpara and Hasimara to reach Jaigaon. The last stretch of 17 km from Hasimara to Jaigaon was negotiated in incessant thunder showers which beat us ruthlessly. It was as if testing whether we were more adamant or the rain, we just rode on to Jaigaon getting drenched only to discover that there was no rain out there.