He has spent all his life in this village of Assam, just 10 kilometres from the National Highway and maybe five times that far from the state capital. He is totally unaware of the strides the rest of the country has made in various fields. His only source of relief in this bleak scenario, the aforementioned TV set, is on the blink most of the time due to chronic power failures or abysmally low voltages.

Burman's children -- Tutul, Proben and Tridib -- spend their time either helping in the house or fishing in the small fields and ponds that abound here. It is as if the summer vacations are never going to end. They are all enrolled in the local school, but attending classes is left for special occasions, like a pooja, a festival or a football match. Therest of the time, there are always the rain-flooded premises, leaky roofs and of course the innumerable bandhs that enable both teachers and students to enjoy an extended holiday.

It is as though this land so generously endowed with nature's bounty has been caught in a time warp. There is no sign outside the handful of cities and towns that the world has moved on. No trace of the motor-vehicle revolution the rest of the country is engulfed in, no MNC wants to set up shop here, no evidence even of the green revolution.

Yes, this Shangrila could be the answer to the prayers of those overcome by the smog and pollution in the metros, their bodies gasping for the fresh air and serenity so much in abundance here. But, ask Burman or his more vocal neighbours and their litany of woes seems to be never-ending. They long to see a bus plying regularly through their village.

The one that deigned to make a trip once a day has long stopped negotiating the flooded road which, in any case, has more of potholes thanflat surface even in the best of times. The local public health centre has not seen a doctor in months, and the health worker has no medicines to give even in cases where elementary first-aid would have saved a life. The only way a seriously ill person or an expectant mother can be brought to the main road to be taken to the district hospital is to carry them in makeshift stretchers or in rickety pushcarts.

There is no way for these people to communicate with the rest of the world in times of crisis or disaster. There is not a single telephone in the whole village. This in an era when STD and PCO booths are seen every few metres and cellular phones can be heard beeping in buses. But, not in this paradise of the pollution-conscious. Burman and his folk are certainly not starving. One never hears of any starvation deaths here. His children are reasonably well clothed. But, is that enough?

Development and its attendant benefits seem to have passed them by. Total apathy on the part of the powers-that-be andthe helpless resignation of the the villagers have combined to ensure a no-change existence. A land so well endowed by nature has made a fetish of playing the underdog, the insurgency providing the proverbial fig-leaf for a succession of governments to let things drift, leading to a situation where it takes just a handful of youth to get together and start yet another militant outfit. Will wisdom dawn on them, at least some of them, to start a movement that will work for their own betterment?

Let us hope that the new millennium will bring some of the comforts of the 21st century to Tutul and Proben as they struggle to make sense of the flickering images on their TV set.