In elephant and Maoist country

This is the road to the Rajgram police camp, constructed under the prime minister's rural road development scheme. It is less than two months old, and though the ruling CPI-M insists it is not just for the movement of security forces, it ends in Rajgram near the police camp. All other villages on the way have approach roads that are dust bowls.

The road meanders through jungles where crickets chirp even as the day heat rises from the earth in waves that singe your eyes and make you feel a nosebleed is just around the corner. In about a month's time, water will all but disappear. The mercury will touch 48 degree Celsius. Now, it is hovering around 44.

"What do they (the policemen) know? They are outsiders," says Upen Murmu, a Rajgram villager. "Once they thought they were being attacked when actually elephants had come that night and villagers were just trying to shoo them away."

Ask villagers about the bon party - the local phrase for Maoists which literally means 'jungle party' - and every average Murmu, every average Mahato, every average Mondal will give you the same answer: "We don't know. We have never seen them." In village after village: Rasiknagar, Dulugdi, Gura, etc, etc...

"The security forces are here because people are feeling scared," says Nibhash Haldar, a visibly middle class trader of babui rope, making which is the traditional livelihood of the tribals in this hostile terrain that turns into an offbeat tourist destination in winter and just drops off the radar in summer.

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