13-Com.A.K.ROY

Saturday, Apr 17, 2004

A misfit in the present political milieu, it is people like him that keep democracy ticking. Toil in the Dhanbad coal belt has chiseled him into a worthy diamond, kindling a ray of hope among the people of the area.

A.K. Roy, 69, who is contesting for the ninth time from a seat he has represented thrice earlier, is a man with a difference. A stickler for principles, he was expelled from the CPI (M) and formed his own party, the Janwadi Kisan Sangram Samiti. He later converted it into the Marxist Coordination Committee in the early 1970s.

This firebrand revolutionary began life as a chemical engineer in a company where he was dismissed from service for supporting a workers' strike in 1966-67. He then entered politics..

For over three decades, he has been running the MCC from a one-room office with an old table and two wooden chairs, apart from books and other reading material.

A paragon of simplicity, Mr. Roy cleans his office and home himself daily before stepping out, in a pajama and kurta, to dress up the lives of the people who work in the collieries, currently facing the threat of privatisation. "Privatisation is no answer to the ailing coal industry. If it had been so it would not have been nationalized in the first place."

Mr. Roy owns no car despite having been an MP thrice, and an MLA on as many occasions. He walks a lot, covering about 20 villages a day. "People move on foot even today. Technology is no supplant. We face no difficulty. You can't be divorced from ground realities."

He sleeps on a mat and his staple food is sattu. Yet this fragile man has it in him to pressure the coal mafia into conceding the miners' due. His struggles have taken him to jail four times, including the one during the JP movement of 1975 when he was the first to resign his membership of the Bihar Assembly. In the aftermath of the Emergency, he successfully contested in the Lok Sabha election from behind the bars.

This time, he says the situation is in his favor in a triangular contest, and banks on the support of the 25,000-odd members of the Bihar Colliery Kamgar Union.

Mr. Roy's election symbol is a book, perhaps, very apt for the man who has Rs. 26,000 in his bank account. He owns nothing else. He was the lone voice stalling the Rajiv Gandhi proposal for increasing the salary and perks of MPs in the Lok Sabha.

In true spirit, Mr. Roy's pension as former MP goes directly to the President's relief fund. He does not avail of any of the facilities due to him as a former MP and lives on his own; rather, on what his comrades make available, including his clothes. He may not be a Mahatma Gandhi, but Mr. Roy's life is also devoted to the masses. At times he visits his nonagenarian mother. He is still a bachelor. Why? "Because," he shrugs, "nobody married me."

- K. Balchand