Synopsis #14
Title: Big Brother
Idea: Guardian Angel
Plot: From childhood the younger brother counts on his elder brother to be there for him when the younger is powerless to act
Genre: Slice of life
Script Regn No (SWA): 42166
Membership
No: 49484
Seg 1
Ajni Railway Station is 3.2 kms from Nagpur Railway Station.
St Francis De Sales (SFS) High School (1870) is 1.6 kms from Nagpur Station.
Seg 2
Ajni – a tiny town - hosts a railway repair workshop
and a yard for trains to be readied for their return journey. Around the
station are quarters for railway staff working at the workshop and for train
drivers.
Seg 3
Unmistakable were the voices of train drivers. In the
60s they were driving steam engines. To talk to a co-driver 5 feet away in the
engine cabin they had to shout over the noise of the coal furnace. When they
spoke in the quiet of the house the neighborhood was not spared any of their
family secrets.
Seg 4
Ramu (Ramanathan) and Janu (Janardhan) were two sons
of the foreman of the workshop. They studied in SFS HS in Nagpur. Ramu was in 7th
std (~12 years old) and Janu in 5th (~10 years old).
Seg 5
The school routine involved catching the 8 am local
train between Ajni and Nagpur station that explicitly served the student
community of the railway colony at Ajni. It was a slow train and it took a
leisurely 40 minutes to cover a distance of 3.6 kms between Ajni and Nagpur
station.
Seg 6
From Nagpur station, up a steep slope to the
pedestrian bridge, and then to the main station and exit toward school. It took
close to 5 minutes. From the exit with heavy school bags, the slow run took 20
minutes to cover 1.6 kms. It was a daily race to make it to school by 9 am or
be punished by standing outside class. This meant alighting from the train
before it had stopped, to be first on the slope to the bridge and down the
other without being blocked by other passengers.
Seg 7
The return from school to catch the 4 pm local train
from Nagpur Station to Ajni Station was the same. It was a race. As with
alighting from the train in the morning, the catching of the train in the
evening was often executed on to a moving train.
Seg 8
On one occasion, Janu the younger, just fell short of
getting on to the train, while Ramu was already on board. Janu kept trying to
get hold of the train handle bar while managing the heavy bag but the train
only speeded up.
Seg 9
At one point, Janu was telling Ramu to get down and
Ramu was telling Janu to get on. This was all happening in 30 seconds but it
seemed like many minutes and hours.
Seg 10
Just before the train could leave the platform Ramu
jumps off. There is a ‘come on you could have done it’ expression on Ramu’s
face and relief and joy on Janu’s face. Janu stops crying.
Seg 11
They walk 3.6 kms home on the train tracks. There is
no other train home for the next hour. And, they have no money for a tonga or
rickshaw.
Seg 12
Ramu had a deep sense of justice. He felt ‘haves’ were
getting rich at the expense of the ‘have-nots’. Ramu becomes a student union
leader in college taking on the management of the college and is branded a
firebrand.
Seg 13
He finishes his studies and joins a trade union
movement and fights for the rights of the workers. He also lives among the
workers even though he had done his LLM. He has cases filed against him by the
management and police which does not allow him to practice law in the courts.
Seg 14
Janu is quieter, avoids all forms of confrontation,
and focuses wholly and completely on his studies. He is a topper in his degree
and professional exams. Janu is set for high offices in the finance industry
including stints with banks and payment companies. Which eventually leads to
work overseas. Janu is financially well settled.
Seg 15
Ramu’s wife is part of the trade union movement more
from the academic and journalistic side writing about worker issues in
publications with clear leftist leanings. The articles are thoroughly
researched with the intent to influence policymakers to design programmes for
those who were getting left out of the mainstream: better remuneration, easier
credit to keep them from the clutches of money lenders especially when crops
fail on their low land holding; benefits that would enable them to educate
their children instead of forcing them into child labour; provision of clean
water and proper sanitation facilities; work opportunities closer home,
retirement and medical benefits, and most crucially land reforms.
Seg 16
Janu had the view that banking should be broad-based.
It must cater to the needs of society across all strata.
Seg 17
He takes a sabbatical from his work to pursue a PhD in
microfinance back home in India. To Janu financial inclusion is a key part of
his doctoral thesis. He wants to study its effectiveness in creating
self-employment in the area of origin negating the need to move from village to
town and city in search of employment to make a living.
Seg 18
Janu moves to a village and sets up base there to do
his research. He ties up with colleagues in the financial industry and other
industries to create channels of employment, funding the projects, getting
products to the market, improving the information flow to get a fair price for
the producers.
Seg 19
Key part of the study is the small borrowers’ capacity
and integrity to pay back loans and to use the credit efficiently and smartly
to turn it around many times to improve profitability of their business.
Seg 20
The two-year long experiments across the seasonal
harvests was working well.
Seg 21
However, the middlemen, money lenders, and the local
landlords found they were losing their hold over their lower classes.
Seg 22
The self-employed producing goods were not selling through
the middlemen but directly to the channel that Janu had help set up. The money
lenders where losing out on their high margins and opportunity to seize the
borrower’s property when payment schedules were not observed. The landlords
were not finding workers for sowing and harvesting. It was not a situation they
wished to encourage.
Seg 23
Ramu meanwhile was involved with unionizing the workers in the sugarcane / sugar factories which were largely owned by politicians. He had his usual run in and time in the lock up until bailed out by his wife and some political pressure from the left. The workers in the factory – both men and women – were from nearby villages where Janu was running his experiment along with a fellow PhD aspirant.
Seg 24
The middlemen, money lenders and landlords conspired
to disrupt the microfinance system. Their lobby was led by a community leader
with a ‘history sheeter’ past. The leader was one of the leading industrialists
and politician in the sugar heartland.
Seg 25
The lobby worked at hitting at the heart of the
villagers funding. They waylaid those who were distributing cash to the
villagers and collecting dues. Janu addressed it by direct transfer to the bank
account of the microfinance subscriber.
Seg 26
When funding disruption did not work, they began
disrupting the supply chain by threatening the transporters of goods. Janu
petitioned the local police stations and higher up in the hierarchy up to
district level to provide protection for the transporters and deal stiffly with
those who were resorting to threat and violence. Every effort of the disrupters
was dealt with a legal and system-based counter.
Seg 27
The local sub-inspector began hinting to Janu that he
and his woman companion were not safe and should prepare to leave the village
for he cannot guarantee their protection. The work that Janu had done had badly
affected the upper caste and moneyed community.
Seg 28
Janu faced with a ‘train’ moment turned to Ramu for
help. Ramu said he could initiate a strike at the
history-sheeter-industrialist-politicians factory but that will only affect the
workers adversely during the harvesting season.
Seg 29
Ramu suggested to Janu that he get his financial
community to study the industrialist bank accounts and tax declaration and make
a case for Income Tax and Enforcement Directorate pressure to be brought on
him. A few in the government economic wing were Janu’s classmates during his
degree and professional degree journey. The investigation is initiated and the
industrialist begins to feel the heat.
Seg 30
Some research on Janu’s background reveals to the
industrialist and his lobby that Janu was behind it all. They set up a
situation for Janu to be accused of rape by the help working in his home. The
SI registers a FIR and Janu was taken into custody.
Seg 31
Ramu tells his trade union colleagues who are from the
village to put a watch on the woman and her husband.
Seg 32
They notice the SI paying off the woman’s husband. The
husband comes home having had quite a few and beats up the woman. It is evident
that the husband and the SI are behind setting up the rape charge on Janu.
Seg 33
Next day at the factory, Ramu’s gang of union members,
corner the husband and with a bit of rough play extract a confession from him
on tape. They threaten him that his crop will be raided by rodents if he were
to squeal to the SI about their little tete-a-tete.
Seg 34
They keep a tab on the SI. They find him asking for
sexual favors of the woman who framed Janu. They alert the village people who
arrive en mass. They foil the SI’s rape attempt on the woman. The SI is caught,
publicly beaten, and taken before a magistrate for his arraignment.
Seg 35
Before the magistrate the woman makes a statement that
she falsely accused Janu under pressure and beating from her husband and
threats from the SI. The union members present documentary evidence of SI
paying off the husband. The SI is dismissed from service and arrested for rape
attempt.
Seg 36
The new SI essentially closes the case against Janu and
opens the case against the lobby based on the SI’s confession. Media gets
selective release of the content of the dossier of financial engineering. The
dossier put together on the industrialist / politician’s financial records are
also pressed into action making a forceful case leading to the whole bunch of
the lobby facing jail term.
Seg 37
Janu is at the door of the train taking him back to
the city with his PhD aspirant friend. Ramu is there with his wife. The train
starts and Ramu for a bit runs along with the train. Janu says come on board
part serious and part in jest. The train crosses the edge of the platform and
Janu makes gesture of getting down. Ramu laughs.
Curtains
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