The Hindu Business Line : The durability of Laloo Prasad Yadav

Love him or hate him, nobody can remain indifferent to Mr Laloo Prasad Yadav. He heads the Rashtriya Janata Dal that has, for the last 14 years, been running Bihar, arguably one of India's economically and socially most backwards States. The durability of this colourful politician may be explained by his canny ability to relate to ordinary people, says Paranjoy Guha Thakurta.

IN LESS than a decade-and-a-half, Mr Laloo Prasad Yadav has risen from being a virtual non-entity even in his native Bihar to one of the best-known political leaders in India. True, he had been a member of the Lok Sabha as early as 1977 when the Janata Party made a clean sweep of all the 54 seats in Bihar, riding a wave of popular anger against Indira Gandhi's Emergency.

Yet, hardly anybody outside his constituency had heard of Laloo Yadav at that time. In fact, he had not even been a member of the State Assembly before contesting the Lok Sabha elections. Today, for most Indians, he symbolises the very essence of Bihar like nobody else has.

Mr Laloo Yadav's start in politics was in the movement led by Jayaprakash Narayan in the mid-1970s. In 1973-74, he was the President of the Patna University Students Union.

Despite his carefully cultivated image of being a rustic buffoon, Mr Laloo Yadav has certainly been one of the most media-savvy politicians in India. He has never ducked questions or refused a request from a journalist for an interview, no matter how big or small she or he may be. His clever one-liners have been the delight of journalists looking for sound bytes.

For example, on the day the RJD was formed in July 1997, Mr Laloo Yadav had appeared on a TV news programme, where the anchor patronisingly remarked that his party could at best hope to be described as a regional party. Pat came the reply: "Regional party? The RJD is the original party." Of course, this was not a just a play on words. In his characteristic style, Mr Laloo Yadav had used humour to drive home the message that his party would be the one to matter in Bihar, not the parent Janata Dal.

Humour has been an important weapon in Mr Laloo Yadav's armoury. He has used it to disarm aggressive critics — whether inside a TV studio or on the floor of the Bihar Assembly or in Parliament. He has also used it to great effect in attacking his opponents.

Unlike other `secular' leaders who rave and rant against the Sangh Parivar, Mr Laloo Yadav resorts to ridiculing them. At a public rally, he had made fun of Dr Murli Manohar Joshi (then the BJP president) for getting knocked down by police personnel using water cannons during a demonstration near Parliament. He referred to Dr Joshi "keeling over like a sick pup" under the impact of a "shower".

Most other politicians would have considered his choice of words "unparliamentary" if not downright vulgar, but the guffaws that followed from the thousands assembled near the Red Fort left little room for doubt that his gag had gone down well.

His penchant for referring to the Bihar chief secretary as "bade babu" — a term more commonly used to describe a head clerk — is an instance of his deliberate use of ridicule. The phrase is not considered offensive by those who did not think too highly of the bureaucracy. At the same time, it also served to tell the chief secretary — and hence the rest of officialdom — who the real boss was.

Mr Laloo Yadav's choice of language and idiom is deliberately rustic. He realises only too well that the more he is berated by the English media for being a boor, the easier it is for him to project himself as a man of the people. He has gone out of his way to reinforce the fact that he is from a family of cowherds and had lived for many years in the quarters given to his brother as a government peon. Laloo talks to journalists wearing a sleeveless ganji (vest) and dhoti while chewing paan. Many other politicians would dread the thought of appearing in public dressed so informally, but for Mr Laloo Yadav, it is just one more opportunity to tell his supporters that he remains one of them.

Mr Laloo Yadav also knows, perhaps better than any other Indian politician, the public relations value of being able to laugh at oneself. Thus, when asked about the incongruity of his government preaching the virtues of small families when he himself is a father of nine children — two sons and seven daughters — Mr Laloo Yadav just chuckles. Similarly, asked whether Rabri Devi is merely a de jure Chief Minister and he is the man who really calls the shots, he grins and says that Rabri is a good Indian wife and, like all good Indian wives, takes her husband's word as her command.

Mr Laloo Yadav's whacky sense of humour is also evident from the fact that he named one of his daughters Misa — the acronym for the Maintenance of Internal Security Act that was misused by Indira Gandhi's government during the Emergency — because she was born while he had been imprisoned under that Act. Another of Mr Laloo Yadav's daughters is named after the popular sweet, Jalebi.

It would be naïve, however, to view Laloo merely as a person with a sense of humour and a good communicator. He is no simpleton when it comes to political battles. The ease with which he has managed to engineer defections from other parties — friendly or hostile to him — to keep his and his wife's governments afloat even when they were in a minority in the Assembly is testimony to his consummate skill in murky number games.

Mr Laloo Yadav has also shown a better appreciation of the compulsions of coalition politics. When the RJD was formed in 1997, he was ostracised by many of his former colleagues in the Janata Dal, as well as erstwhile allies in the United Front. In such a situation, many politicians would have become bitter. But not Laloo. In this respect, he presents a sharp contrast to Mr Mulayam Singh Yadav, who has never forgotten his brushes with his political rivals or opponents, be they in the Congress party or the Bahujan Samaj Party.

At the same time, Mr Laloo Yadav suffers from a weakness common to many Indian politicians. He has been unable to resist the temptation of flaunting his riches and his power. Thus, his daughter Misa's wedding was celebrated with much pomp and splendour that stood out starkly in an economically backward State. It was reported that his cohorts coerced car-dealers to part with brand-new vehicles for a short period to ensure that the wedding guests could travel in style.

Mr Laloo Yadav has also been quite brazen about the manner in which he has patronised criminals and goons. Mohammed Sahabuddin, the outgoing RJD MP from Siwan in northern Bihar, is notorious in the area as a `don' who has been accused of engineering the murder of several people, including Chandrashekhar, a former president of the students' union at Jawaharlal Nehru University in New Delhi.

Mr Laloo Yadav's brothers-in-law, Sadhu Yadav and Subhash Yadav, are a law unto themselves in the State and, as in the case of Sahabuddin, the local administration and the police have never taken any action against their strong-arm tactics.

To be fair to Laloo, he is hardly the only politician to patronise criminals. Yet, he and Rabri Devi have been unable to prevent Bihar being perceived as one of the most lawless of Indian States.

The Samata Party first referred to the RJD's reign as "jungle raj", an accusation that has been repeated by many. Mr Laloo Yadav once attempted to laugh this away by quoting from a hit Hindi film song of the 1970s: Chahe koi mujhe junglee kahe, kahne do ji kahta rahe, hum pyaar ke toofanon mein ghire hain, hum pyaar karen. (Loosely translated, these words mean: "I don't care if anybody calls me a savage, I'm caught up in a whirlwind of love, I just continue to love").

Laloo has argued that Bihar's economic backwardness is due to New Delhi's discriminatory attitude. He has not always bothered to seriously respond to the charge that economic development has been a casualty under the RJD.

There is this story — perhaps apocryphal — about a villager complaining to Laloo that the road passing through his village had been potholed for years. The latter is said to have replied that smooth roads would only help those with fancy cars and would actually be a threat to the children of the village, who might be run over by speeding vehicles!

In his otherwise successful political career, Mr Laloo Yadav has had to face at least one embarrassing defeat. This was during the 1999 Lok Sabha elections, which he contested from Madhepura. The contest was particularly important for him because the man opposing him was his erstwhile colleague in the Janata Dal, Sharad Yadav.

Mr Laloo Yadav boasted that he would prove that Sharad Yadav was a mere paper tiger, a person without a mass base. Sharad Yadav, on the other hand, asserted that he would prove he was a taller leader of the Yadavs in Bihar than Laloo.

As the campaign progressed, it was evident that the contest would be much closer than had been initially expected. Nevertheless, few people expected Laloo to lose. So much so, that immediately after the polling was over, Sharad Yadav demanded a repoll, alleging massive rigging by RJD supporters. When the Election Commission refused to yield to the demand, Sharad Yadav alleged bias and announced that he would fast unto death unless a repoll was ordered.

The EC went ahead with the counting and Sharad Yadav was ultimately left facing the bizarre situation of wildly cheering supporters informing him that he could break his fast, since he had won in an election that he had earlier insisted had been rigged!

This time round, Mr Laloo Yadav has decided to play it safe. Besides Madhepura, he is contesting against Union Civil Aviation Minister, Mr Rajiv Pratap Rudy, from Chhapra. A number of opinion polls and exit polls have indicated that the RJD would win substantially more than six out of the 40 Lok Sabha seats currently held by it in the divided State. If that indeed happens, Laloo's popularity would receive a new lease of life.

(The author is Director, School of Convergence, International Management Institute, New Delhi and a journalist with over 25 years of experience in various media — print, Internet, radio and television. This article has been based on a section of a book co-authored by him and Shankar Raghuraman entitled: "A Time of Coalitions: Divided We Stand" published recently by Sage Publications. He can be contacted at paranjoy@yahoo.com.)