The Hindu Business Line : Bihar set for an interesting tussle

UTTAR PRADESH might be the most important State for any Lok Sabha elections for the huge number of MPs — all of 80 — it can return to Parliament, but any election in Bihar generates immense interest not only among the politicians and the media but also electorate in the rest of the country.

The most important reason for this is that this is the State of the most colourful politician of them all — the Rashtriya Janata Dal chief Mr Laloo Prasad Yadav. Vitriolic one moment, entertaining the next, mouthing inanities or dancing with the masses, he has carved a special place for himself in Indian politics.

And then Bihar has a star line up when it comes to candidates from the National Democratic Alliance, beginning with its convenor, Mr George Fernandes, who is contesting from Muzaffarpur, leaving his constituency of Nalanda for the Railway Minister, Mr Nitish Kumar, who is also contesting from Barh. Then you have the Civil Aviation Minister, Mr Rajiv Pratap Rudy, the sitting MP from Chapra, who, despite having nursed his constituency well, has cause for worry because Mr Laloo Prasad Yadav has announced his candidature from Chapra, the place where he grew up and worked for a good part of his life.

Apart from the Information Minister, Mr Ravi Shankar Prasad, another high profile Bihar politician, the External Affairs Minister, Mr Yashwant Sinha's Hazaribagh constituency is now in Jharkhand but he is also associated with Bihar politics.

In an interview to Business Line, Mr Yadav appeared not only relaxed but confident of doing much, much better this time compared to the miserable performance his party had put up in the 1999 elections when the RJD got only 7 seats. "This time with Mr Ram Vilas Paswan's return, we'll get about 35 out of 40 seats in Bihar," he says cheerfully.

At the press conference following the release of the RJD manifesto, where he has promised the moon to the electorate, and that too on the plank of development, where the RJD Government has had a dismal record, he was full of pithy one-liners targeting both Mr Nitish Kumar and Mr George Fernandes.

On the Railway Minister's decision to contest from two constituencies, the Bihar strongman said, "Nitish dar gaya, woh ghir gaya, chakravyuh me phans gaya (Nitish is scared and trapped in a chakravyuh)."

Attempting to drive a wedge between the two JD (U) leaders he alleged that Mr Nitish Kumar had "double crossed" Mr Fernandes by demanding that he be given the Nalanda seat which had compelled the later to shift to Muzaffarpur. "Is bar dono guru-chela jayenga," he thundered.

Later, talking to this correspondent , he said Mr Rudy was so "scared at losing to Mr Yadav that he is now bringing in film stars like Anil Kapoor to campaign for him. But he is a gone case."

Theatrics apart, what is giving Mr Yadav an extra dose of confidence is that this time around he has managed a strategic alliance with Mr Ram Vilas Paswan's Lokshakti Party, the Congress-I and the CPI-M. Though the Congress-I's plight in Bihar is so pathetic that it has had to be content with a mere four seats being allotted to it by the RJD, against Mr Paswan's party's eight seats, political analysts point out that the Paswan factor will help him improve his tally substantially.

Says Dr Shibal Gupta, Member-Secretary of the Asian Development Research Institute, "The difference between 1999 and now is that then Mr Yadav was fighting all alone; there was no alliance even with the Congress." He feels that with the Congress-I being a minor player — "the majority of its vote bank in the upper castes has moved to the BJP" — it is the Paswan factor that will help the RJD.

"In Bihar, the Paswans — they are called Dushars here — are the local musclemen. Even during the zamindari period, most of the atrocities that were committed by the zamindars, were committed through them. They are a very militant caste and played a role during the non-co-operation movement, and lynched the British officers. They were classified by the British as a criminal caste. The Yadavs and Paswans together form a caste mahasabha, and form a quite a formidable combination at the ground level."

But with the BJP and JD (U) also presenting a substantially formidable force, the battle is bound to be a keen one. For one, almost all the NDA Ministers hailing from Bihar have not only looked after their constituencies well, they have done something or the other for Bihar, points out Dr Gupta. "For instance, Mr Fernandes has been instrumental in bringing here an Ordinance factory and starting Sainik schools."

Both the coalitions are riddled with dissension. While the RJD and Congress-I are facing problems with aspirants for tickets outnumbering the number of seats several times over, the BJP is sore at the JD (U) on several counts. One is the BJP being given only 16 seats by the JD (U) against its original demand of 25 seats. Another is the JD (U) grabbing the post of Leader of Opposition in the Bihar Assembly from the BJP's Sushil Modi, as soon as its tally increased to 37 MLAs, thanks to the return of two members of a splinter group. That Mr Fernandes "grabbed" the Muzaffarpur constituency from a sitting BJP MP, Mr Jainarain Nishad, is another grouse.

On the other side of the divide, the Congress-I is livid with Mr Yadav for treating it as a non-entity, while he keeps showering all his attention and affection on Mr Paswan. In the Hajipur constituency, adjoining Patna, from where he is contesting, Mr Paswan is considered a demigod. The refrain you hear from the villages about his goodness, his having worked for the constituency, making it a Railway zone, etc is so unanimous, that after a point it gets downright boring.

Until Shanti Devi, a 55-year-old daily wage labourer in Jadua village in the Hajipur constituency, reacts violently to Arun Ram, a 25-year-old transport operator saying condescendingly, "Oh, the women of Bihar are illiterate and don't know much. They will vote only for the party we, the men, ask them to vote for."

Leaping to her feet, the woman screams, "Be careful about what you say. Both the politicians and people like you have pushed us, the women, around for too long. We lead a miserable life. The politicians cheat us all the time with their tall promises... calling us ma, bahen, beti, at the time of elections and treating us like dirt once the voting is over. Let them come to me begging for my vote this time and I'll teach them a lesson. And, people like you, dressed in fancy clothes, are no better. Don't you dare tell me who I should vote for."