Documents of ADATS - Book 6
Completion Report on Final Phase of Coolie Sangha Building in Bagepalli & DLDP 2nd Phase (April 1995)
The December 1994 Progress Report on Coolie Sangha Consolidation in Bagepalli taluk described the events and situation which led to the BAGEPALLI COOLIE SANGHA deciding on converting the hitherto procedure of voluntary contributions into a regulated system of compulsory Tax.
In November 1994 the BCS Meeting officially, unanimously and enthusiastically decided that every Member Coolie family would declare her family income on a prescribed form (verified by the entire CSU) and contribute a fixed percentage of this (to vary from year to year, based on annual BCS decisions) to the Sangha Fund in the form of a compulsory Tax. The paying of this Tax would be synonymous with renewal of membership in the Coolie Sangha for the following year.
The December 1994 BCS Meeting decided that Sangha Tax for the calendar year 1994 would be fixed at 6% and the last date for paying their dues would be 31 January 1995.
This Completion Report shares what happened in the first quarter of the new year. These past 3 months have been full of ups and downs, alternating between exhilaration and gloom, with a nail biting anxiety as to whether it will all work. We have tried to probe into reasons why the ones who paid their taxes did so and why others chose not to. It is inevitable that such an exercise cannot rely on facts and figures alone. The subjective interpretations of the Field staff and senior BCS functionaries have been called upon to draw applicable conclusions.
The conclusions drawn here are very tentative, however convincingly they have been argued or forcefully they are presented. ADATS’ withdrawal and the “taking over” of their independent people’s organisation by themselves is akin to an organisational crisis within the BCS; a crisis from which only positive progress will be obtained. But crisis is a time when friends and well wishers must be around, offering moral support and strategising on each and every opening to move forward. This special phase of our accompanying them, where roles will often get blurred and reversed will, we suspect, last for the next 2 or 3 years.
The Report also deals with a particular predicament facing the Coolies in the running of the Coolie Credit Funds (CCFs) the problem of Overdue. We have tried to find the reasons for this problem and conclude that the rather ambitious economic agenda set by the Coolies has not failed in any great measure.