BIKRAM RAI

DHANUSA â" This week, BBC Nepali ran a report about how Pahadi families who were displaced from the plains after the Madhes uprising were starting to come back. They had left their homes, neighbours and livelihoods to take refuge in the predominantly Pahadi town of Hetuada. Some had moved to Kathmandu, but could not adjust to the new life and longed for home.

I was immediately reminded of the Tamang and Chettri families I met in Bara four years ago. They spoke to each other in Bhojpuri, and their Nepali had a defined Madhesi accent. Their families had lived in the Tarai for generations and had grown up together. They had no home in the hills to go back to, had little idea of their ancestral roots and had decided to stay despite daily threats and intimidation by armed Madhesi groups.

I lost touch, and have often wondered what became of them. Did they leave, did they stay? But travelling to my own ancestral village in the eastern Tarai last month, I could see there is more holding Nepalis together than is setting us apart.

Here in the heart of the eastern Tarai, Pahadis and Madhesis have been living cheek to jowl for over a hundred years now. The Giris and Bharatis who came from the hills established a new settlement together with locals from nearby villages. A new village was formed, and over the years the two communities are so well integrated that unless one asks, they wouldn't know who is a Pahadi or who is Madhesi.

Of course, these stories don't count when leaders who claim to represent the Madhes spew hatred, threaten secession and blockades. They suggest the only way to right the wrongs committed against the Madhes is to scare away all the Pahadis from Tarai. It is this corrosive politics of hate and revenge that gets all the headlines in Kathmandu.

But here on the ground ask farmers and traders what concerns them the most, it is almost never politics or 'identity'. They are worried about the lack of roads and bridges, and where they exist, the terrible state they are in. They are worried about the rainy season, floods, the lack of irrigation and falling harvests and prices of their produce. They are worried about their sons toiling in the deserts of the Gulf, and the fields they will have to sell to pay the middleman to send their second son to Qatar.

When politics does touch them, it takes the shape of prolonged strikes that cripple life for weeks on end. They worry about federalism and what it will mean. Op-eds in Kathmandu's national media carry dire warnings from pundits about the coming Madhesi conflagration of anger, or a violent backlash if federalism is rejected. There is almost no sign of it here.

The people of the Madhes gave up hope long ago of their Madhesi leaders doing anything for them. There is disillusionment and a realisation that Madhesi leaders do not speak for the Madhesi people. Madhesis are now in the government with powerful portfolios, the deputy prime minister and home minister are Madhesis. But what have these leaders done except split countless times, make short-lived alliances to blackmail their way into government and issue empty threats just so that they can remain politically relevant?

The Madhes is how it has always been: left to itself. And the people of the Tarai have come to terms with it. No one wants another uprising, they just want development and jobs. Madhesi leaders would want us to believe that all the problems of the plains, the inequality, injustice and state neglect will be resolved once they have a Madhesi federal state. But few here hold out much hope.

Madhesi people want better leaders, not this discredited bunch who defected from the NC and rode the wave of the Madhes Movement in 2007. Madhesis want to be respected, and treated like Nepalis. They want an end to the criminalisation of politics. Anyone who thinks otherwise, like a village elder here told me, hasn't lived here long enough.