Pratim Ranjan Bose
Years ago, in the summer of 2008, I went to a remote district of North Bihar, bordering Nepal, to attend the foundation stone laying ceremony of a bogus industrial investment proposal.
The remoteness had nothing to do with distance or terrain, but the condition of the road that converted a mere 150 km travel from the State capital of Patna, through the plains, into a back-breaking six hours journey – all that to hear Lalu Yadav lampooning the Bihar Chief Minister and his political arch-rival Nitish Kumar in a language that should have called for some censorship.
That was two years after Nitish Kumar-led JD(U)-BJP coalition assumed power in Bihar, ending the 15-year rule of fodder scam tainted Lalu Yadav’s RJD and; months before India went to General Election in early 2009.
Lalu, referred by his supporters as Messiah of Bihar, was then the rail minister in the Congress-led UPA government in Delhi and was pulling every string to improve his party’s prospects in the General Election. Indian Railways was asked to open a shop at his native place and some dubious investors were invited put up a show on his behalf.
The Lalu model
The trend was new though in Bihar politics.
Leave alone industry, till November 2005, when Kumar became Chief Minister, there was no semblance of governance in Bihar. With open drains and bullock carts, Patna was one of the filthiest cities I have seen, not only in India but in the subcontinent.
There were practically no roads, no electricity in this part of the Hindi heartland. And law and order was a forgotten chapter. Even the capital city used to pull down shutters at the sun down. Lalu, a champion of caste politics, won many elections either for not doing anything or doing only wrong things.
At a meeting in Kolkata journalists (including a few ladies) were once taken aback, when Lalu raised his knee-length kurta (long shirt) to submit a visible proof of him of going commando under the pajama (trousers). Uncouth you may say, but that was his response to allegations of lack of transparency. “I have nothing to hide”, he said boldly.
Of course, he had little to hide. His supporters and party goons terrorized Bihar, openly. And when Lalu married off his daughter in 2002, newspapers were splashed with reports of RJD activists lifting brand new cars from showrooms in Patna to keep their leader happy.
It was Bihar model of electoral democracy that thrived on lawlessness, complete lack of development and, last but not the least exporting its poverty to the rest of the nation. While the educated elite had long shifted base from the State; the uneducated poor were left with the only option of selling cheap labour outside Bihar.
From Kolkata to Mumbai and Kashmir to Kanyakumari – Biharis of numerous caste and creed make a living by pushing carts or carrying headloads. But Bihar politics was never ashamed of it. They thrived on it. Whenever the election came, the migratory population headed back to the State. They were expected to use franchise in favour of their respective caste representatives, shrewdly lined up by the ruling politics - failing which the politics would launch a vicious attack on their families and property left behind in Bihar.
The caste-ridden Bihari society accepted it as fait accompli.
Nitish rewrote the narrative
Nitish Kumar rewrote these known narratives of Bihar politics.
Considering the ground realities, he couldn’t create a thriving Gujarat out of it. The weakness of his party didn’t allow him to avoid the stranglehold of caste-politics altogether. But what he did after the election, was remarkable, and I got a hint of it in that 2008 meeting.
With Lalu tearing apart Nitish Kumar (who was conspicuously absent in the meeting) on stage, I asked a villager standing at a distance if he felt any change in Nitish Kumar regime. The response was razor sharp: “Had you been here two years ago, you could have been abducted by now.”
He knew it by his life. Until Nitish came into power, most of the able-bodied men from the village travelled outside to earn a living. There was not much point in cultivating their family land either, as criminals will take away the harvest. Nitish changed that. For the first time in decades, he introduced the rule of the law in Bihar and laid the foundation to attract investments. The change was so overwhelming that even a Lalu tried to speak the language of development that he had never believed in.
I have been to Bihar a couple of times since then, and the change is unmistakable in the air. Road condition has improved substantially reducing the travelling time. Many new roads are laid connecting wider population. The power situation is far better than what I experienced in the past.
For a State that didn’t have a power plant running; transmission distribution lines were either non-existent or defunct and, whatever little electricity was available were either hooked or tapped there is now a sea change. I was surprised to experience 18-20-hour power supply at Gaya last summer. The change was so dramatic that it affected the sales of generator sets and inverters – that had all across been an integral part Bihari household.
Meticulous planning, a strong focus on development, took Bihar on the course of development in the last 10 years. It was a pleasure seeing people dining out or visiting malls in the evening.
Don’t compare Bihar with any other State, leave alone a Gujarat or Tamil Nadu. Patna is not comparable to Bhopal in Madhya Pradesh, Raipur in Chhattisgarh or even a Ranchi in Jharkhand. (I am taking reference of the BJP ruled States consciously). But, it is surely miles ahead from where I had seen it in 2008. And, even a tea vendor or cigarette seller will confirm: “Bihar has changed”.
No wonder that Lalus failed to make a comeback in Bihar since 2005.
The hara-kiri and the 2015 election
It doesn’t require deep knowledge in socio-economics to tell that Bihar needed the tempo to continue for another decade or so, to break the vicious cycle forever. And, even a layman could conclude that BJP not only lent Nitish the much-needed ground support to change the known political paradigms in Bihar but, also allowed him to take all the glory for it.
Those who know the former deputy Chief Minister Sushil Modi of the BJP, would agree he was a fine brain behind many of the reformist agendas of the Nitish Kumar government. Development politics needs a quality team and, Nitish didn’t have many of them in his own party. And for journalists across the country, who equated Bihari politicians with comic strip characters, it was a pleasant relief to watch an articulated Sushil Modi inviting industry in Bihar.
Nitish had upset this apple cart in June 2013 when he had quit BJP-led NDA coalition. It was primarily driven by his burning ambition to become Prime Minister of India, on behalf of NDA and; gross underestimation of the abilities and acceptance of Narendra Modi as the Prime Minister of India. It was also a posturing to win the confidence of the significant number of Muslim voters in Bihar. In the end, he lost the game by a wide margin. BJP won most of the seats in Bihar in 2014 Generation election. And, Nitish’s effort to draw public sympathy by quitting the office to an inept yet ambitious colleague, Jitan Ram Manjhi, ended up in a tragic show. He was seen fighting to get his seat back, triggering dissidence and further erosion of his image.
Nitish was now left with the Hobson’s choice of joining hands with Lalu - the naysayer to development politics, who controls a caste vote bank - for the 2015 Assembly election that will begin on October 12.
End of development politics?
Politics, they say, makes strange bedfellows. But the Lalu-Nitish coalition is stranger than that.
The combined effect of the Nitish government in Bihar and, the nationwide vote for development politics in 2014 saw Lalu slipping into oblivion. And, having upset apple cart, Nitish was now desperate to be back into the reckoning. With his back on the wall, he has now surrendered to the same paradigm of Bihar politics from where he once scripted a change. Development politics has little place in his scheme of things now.
For BJP, this election holds more significance than a mere prestige fight. Despite a landslide victory in May 2014 Lok Sabha Election, Narendra Modi’s BJP is a minority in the Rajya Sabha or Upper House (Council of States) of the Parliament that is represented by members elected by the State legislators. This is considered a major roadblock in taking reformist agendas ahead.
BJP has won successive elections in all major States since the 2014 Lok Sabha Election. (The only loss came at Delhi that a Union Territory) And, a win in Bihar will help it maintaining the power balance at Rajya Sabha beginning 2016.
Out of a long and stable coalition with Nitish, BJP is therefore not ready to take any chances in Bihar election that is evenly poised. True, the Prime Minister stole many hearts by the announcement of his mega development package for Bihar. But that alone may not clinch a winner.
The fight ahead is tough. Though opinion polls are slightly tilted in Nitish-Lalu’s favour, considering the wafer thin margin between the two sides, a small change here and there will script a change in the final results.
BJP is therefore out to beat Lalu-Nitish combine in their own game – caste politics. With Nitish-Lalu leaving no stone unturned to woo Muslim votes by resorting to Hate-Narendra Modi, ‘Hate-BJP’ campaign; BJP flashed the Hindu religious card, as is evident in Sushil Modi’s recent promise to stop cow slaughter in Bihar. The entry of Asaduddin Owaisi’s Muslim religious force is further vitiating the atmosphere.
To cut the long story short, Bihar politics is back to its old narrative. For some, it was a survival strategy. For some others, it’s a compromise for national growth. And, there are a few opportunists fishing in troubled waters. None of these equations should augur well for Bihar in the days to come.
The entire responsibility of this change rests on Nitish Kumar. It was he who promised a new beginning. It was also he, who had put a big question mark on the future of Bihar.
Will Bihar survive this test?
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(Disclaimer: Graphics are collected from the web. Will be removed in case of any objection.)
