Mr Modi, show them the money - Why cashier Mithun is facing the music

Mithun Kumar is looking for a place to hide - from women seeking money.
A cashier with the Madhya Bihar Gramin Bank in Rana Bigha, 90km from Patna, Mithun blushes behind the counter every time a villager asks the familiar question: "Has the kala dhan (black money) arrived yet?"
The next query leaves him even more tongue-tied: "When's it coming to our bank accounts, then?"
"It" is the Rs 15 lakh that Narendra Modi had promised every Indian during last year's general election campaign provided they made him Prime Minister, allowing him to retrieve all the black money rich Indians had hidden abroad.
By September 2014, almost all the women of Rana Bigha had opened bank accounts under Modi's flagship Pradhan Mantri Jan Dhan Yojana - within days of its Independence Day launch - so the money could be deposited in their names.
Since then, the women have been coming at least once a week to enquire about the money. But now, in Assembly poll season, their visits have become more frequent.
"We don't know where to hide our faces - and it's all because of the politicians," Mithun complained.
Rana Bigha's women have apparently not realised that BJP president Amit Shah had, as far back as February, admitted that the Rs 15-lakh promise was a jumla - a mere figure of speech. And Mithun hasn't the heart, or the nerve, to tell them.
But why has the women's interest in the money suddenly intensified after all these months? Apparently because some BJP cadres, despite Shah's admission, have been spreading rumours among voters saying the money has arrived but the bank officials are holding on to it.
"The villagers are growing impatient," Mithun said at the bank, set up on the first floor of an under-construction building in June last year - coincidentally days after Modi assumed office.
"A group of women arrived with their husbands a fortnight ago, saying they had learnt that Modiji had sent the money. They asked us to credit it to their accounts or else they would complain to Modiji," one of Mithun's colleagues at the bank said.
Modi addressed an election rally at Golapur on October 25, about 2km from Rana Bigha.
Rana Bigha isn't alone. Villagers all over Bihar are demanding the promised Rs 15 lakh, confirmed senior officials at several nationalised banks in Patna, where lakhs have opened accounts under the Jan Dhan Yojana over the past one year.
"Our officials have been facing the same question from poor farmers in our branches across Bihar," a senior State Bank of India official said.
Yojana hope
In the past one year, the Gramin Bank branch at Rana Bigha has registered around 3,000 new savings accounts, of which 80 per cent are zero-balance ones opened under the Jan Dhan Yojana.
Somehow, the Prime Minister's marquee social welfare scheme - which allows the poor to open zero-balance bank accounts - had got entwined with his marquee pre-election promise.
"The poor opened these accounts with the sole hope of receiving the Rs 15 lakh - else they don't earn enough to do business with banks," Mithun's colleague said. "All these accounts have been lying inoperative."
Mithun agreed. "For most of the women in Rana Bigha, these were the first bank accounts they had opened in their lives," he said.
"They had taken it very seriously when local BJP leaders and workers announced the money would be deposited as soon as their party formed the government at the Centre."
Even some of those who had a bank account had opened a fresh one under the Yojana because they thought the promised sum would be credited only under the scheme - a testament to how rumours and the poll promise fed each other.
Disenchanted
The polls have split Rana Bigha's 400 households along caste lines, with the Yadavs favouring Lalu Prasad, the Kurmis backing Nitish Kumar, the Dalits behind Ram Vilas Paswan and the upper castes rooting for the BJP.
This marks a resumption of normality after most of the village voted for Modi in last year's general election. Now they seem disenchanted with him, a prime reason being the unpaid kala dhan.
It's one subject Rana Bigha agrees on across caste lines.
Deji Devi, a Dalit from the Malah community, held up her bank passbook, which carries her photo and shows a balance of zero rupees. " Zero ka zero hi hai abhi tak (it's still zero)," she sighed.
Deji narrated how she and her husband Pranav Kewat, a day labourer, had stood for hours in a makeshift tent erected by the riverbank in September last year to open a joint bank account.
"After all, it was a matter of Rs 15 lakh. We have never seen such a huge sum," she said. "So we both rushed to open the account, thinking all our problems would be solved. But we have not received a single paisa."
Her scepticism is shared by Rakesh Gupta, a Bania, and Rajinder Pandey, a Brahmin and a BJP supporter.
"We like him (Modi) but not his promises. By now he too seems to have realised his folly," Pandey said.
"He hasn't made any tall promises during his speeches in Bihar - he hasn't even spoken about achchhe din (good days)."
Gupta complained that Modi keeps saying "the same things again and again", whether or not they materialise on the ground.
He was noncommittal about his vote but said that local issues determine state elections.
Visiting the village last week, The Telegraph found residents talking about development amid a growing respect for Nitish and the measures he has taken: good roads, new schools and colleges, electricity and, most important, better law and order.
Numbers game
A senior State Bank official in Patna said the Jan Dhan Yojana had been reduced to a numbers game, with banks competing to meet their targets.
"To achieve the numbers, people who had accounts were asked to open new accounts under the scheme. Most of these are lying dormant without any transaction," the official said.
"What use is a bank account to a poor man who has nothing to put in it?" an official at a Bank of India branch in Patna asked.
"Banks can't afford to give loans to people who have no regular income and don't have a credit history."
In August, the Centre had claimed that around 18 crore bank accounts had been opened under the scheme and that nearly every household had a bank account where wages and subsidies were being directly routed.
Media reports say that nearly three-fourths of the accounts opened under the scheme have zero balance.
Some of the Yojana's other features are: an accident insurance of Rs 1 lakh, an additional life cover of Rs 30,000, and an overdraft facility of Rs 5,000.
Villagers in Rana Bigha said that bank officials were refusing any overdraft unless they kept their accounts operative by making transactions, which they had been unable to do.
"How shall we deposit money in our accounts when we don't have enough to feed our children? It has become difficult even to secure dal and roti," Deji said, referring to the steep prices of pulses.
"We'll go to Golapur on Sunday to listen to Modi. Given an opportunity, we'll ask him about his failure to keep his word."
But Usha Devi, a Kurmi, is clinging on to a forlorn hope.
"I keep my passbook under lock and key just in case the money comes," she said, drawing peals of laughter from other villagers.