The Hindu Business Line : Bihar: The road ahead

In a clear mandate, the people of Bihar have voted across caste and communal divide to send the message that they want change. It is now up to Mr Nitish Kumar, expected to be the next Chief Minister, to deliver on his promises and put his State firmly on the growth path, says Rasheeda Bhagat.

The Janata Dal (United) leader, Mr Nitish Kumar, with Mr Sharad Yadav (left) and BJP leader, Mr Arun Jaitley... Will the winning combination ensure progress in Bihar? — R. V. Moorthy

THE voters of Bihar have spoken. And this time around, the claims by the Congress(I) or the Left parties that the Rashtriya Janata Dal-Congress-CPI(M) alliance lost the Assembly election due to the fracture in the "secular vote" do not impress.

The mandate is clear; the people of Bihar have voted across caste and communal divide to send the strong message that they want change. And along with the Janata Dal(U) chief, Mr Nitish Kumar, there is another surprising victor — the Election Commission. Criticised by several political parties for spreading the schedule over a tortuously long month, the EC is now being hailed for ensuring free and fair polls in a State notorious for rigging, booth capturing, and worse.

The JD(U)-led alliance has won a whopping 143 seats, 21 above the simple majority of 122 in a house of 243, while the RJD-led grouping secured just 65. Though, clearly, the JD(U) is the senior partner in the National Democratic Alliance in Bihar and has got 88 of the 143 seats, what must be particularly galling for the RJD chief, Mr Lalu Prasad, is that the BJP, with 55 seats, is ahead of the RJD by one! Small wonder that, even while accepting defeat "in all humility", Mr Lalu Prasad has promised to co-operate with the incoming Chief Minister, Mr Nitish Kumar, but not with the BJP. Going along with the camaraderie, Mr Nitish Kumar has said that his government will not indulge in any vendetta against Mr Lalu Prasad, who is like his "elder brother", or the RJD government.

This election has put an end, at least for the time being, to that chapter in Bihar's history when a certain oppressed section of society, against which discrimination was rampant, had turned to Mr Lalu Prasad, who was then perceived to be the bearer of the Jayaprakash Narayan legacy.

Those of us who have tried over the years to understand the mystique of the Lalu charisma that returned him and his party back to power over 15 long years, despite charges of corruption and inefficiency, were always given the same explanation, though couched in different language, depending on whom we spoke to.

In the mid-1990s, when the Narasimha Rao government was in power in Delhi, the voters in Mr Lalu Prasad's Assembly constituency of Raghopur, who barely had food to eat, clothes to wear or a roof over their heads, when queried on his involvement in the fodder scam, had said scathingly to this correspondent: "Aap mediawalon ko Laluji ka bhrashtachar nazar aata hai kyonki woh pichli jaati ke hein, lekin Narasimha Rao ka bhrashtachar nahi dikhta kyonki woh Brahmin hein (You media people talk about Lalu's corruption because he belongs to a backward class, but not Narasimha Rao's because he is a Brahmin). In those days, Narasimha Rao was in trouble over the issue of bribing of JMM MPs to survive the vote of confidence in Parliament.

One `Raghopurean' added defiantly: "You can dismiss Lalu and his government as many times as you want, but even though we might not have enough to eat, we will collect money and make sure he wins the subsequent election. So what can the rest of the country do?"

Academics would, of course, analyse threadbare Mr Lalu Prasad's hold over Bihar, arguing that the urban, educated classes in the rest of the country, including those from the backward sections, "would never be able to appreciate Lalu's contribution in giving zubaan (voice) to the backward classes. If today a backward-class person can go up before the rulers — politicians or bureaucrats — and seek an answer to a question, it is a huge leap from the time when he had to kneel with folded hands before the zamindars, who were the rulers then."

Perhaps, Bihar's oppressed classes think they have paid off their debt to the champion of social justice and decided to call it quits. But before examining the reason for this, for the record, it must be stated that Mr Lalu Prasad does not deserve the full credit for the social re-engineering in Bihar. Right from the 1920s there was some sort of a subterranean anti-Brahmin, anti-upper class and anti-zamindar movement in the State. What Mr Lalu Prasad did was to give a leadership and momentum to that movement, fine-tune it to a high degree and ensure that it changed the political configuration, not only in his own party but the other parties or the State units of larger outfits with a political presence in Bihar.

Today, the list of the leading political players in Bihar reads thus: Messrs Lalu Prasad, Nitish Kumar, Sharad Yadav and Ram Vilas Paswan. An analysis of their caste tells Bihar's story and the importance of social re-engineering in the State. But coming back to the verdict of November 2005, it is well evident that, along with social justice, Bihar's people want more in terms of economic opportunities, their right to a peaceful society — after all, Bihar is neither a Kashmir nor any of those North-East States that feels alienated from the rest of the country for various reasons — and a share of that part of India that is indeed shining.

Also, those classes that did not benefit from Mr Lalu Prasad's brand of social justice — the most backward and the most economically deprived — have struck back. This group cuts across communal lines, or else the Nitish Kumar-led NDA would not have scored a landslide victory in Bihar.

Another reason for the decisive mandate was the political drama the State witnessed after last year's Assembly elections and the unsavoury role played by the Bihar Governor, Mr Buta Singh, not only in dissolving the Assembly and calling fresh elections, but also allegedly acting at the behest of the RJD chief.

For the Congress, which has ceased to be a key player in Bihar for a couple of decades now, though the prospect of the NDA taking over another State must be galling, the silver lining is a subdued Lalu. The man who gave the Congress(I) a whopping 29 seats out of 40 in the Lok Sabha election barely 18 months ago, though with the support of the Lok Jansakti Party's Ram Vilas Paswan, then in the RJD-led alliance, will pipe down, at least for a while. The belligerent Lalu, who had then insisted on getting the Railway portfolio that Mr Paswan had his eyes on, no longer has the bargaining clout he once had as chieftain of Bihar.

But to Mr Lalu Prasad's credit it must be said that even his detractors are taken aback by the fairly good job he has done of improving the performance of the Railways. This may have been achieved, ironically enough, by his reining in corrupt officials and allowing the honest and efficient ones to run the Ministry. But the end result is positive; those who were getting Railway contracts at a pittance, at least for the record, have now to cough up much more, hopefully sending Railway revenues northward. But Bihar's woes are far greater than that of the Railways, and there are huge expectations from the man at its helm. As far as corruption in politics is concerned, Mr Nitish Kumar has a cleaner image than most politicians. Since Independence, Bihar has been one of the badly-governed States, and things only deteriorated the last 15 years.

Asked why Bihar had lagged behind on all parameters of development, and what could now be done to take it ahead with great speed to catch up with the rest of the country, Dr Shaibal Gupta, Member-Secretary of the Patna-based Asian Development Research Institute, had told Business Line in an earlier interview: "I have great belief that the future is not as bleak as it appears at the moment. Anyway, in the future, the State will withdraw from main economic activity and the market will play an important role. Biharis are already functioning without the important preponderant role of the State. And they know how to convert their disadvantages into advantages."

He had added that at least the better-off Biharis knew the importance of education and had invested in their children's education in good institutions either abroad or outside Bihar. If the knowledge-based industries such as IT and ITES, that had ushered in a revolution in several pockets of the South and West, were to be pursued vigorously in Bihar by any government, "Bihar can afford to skip the industrial revolution and straightaway enter into the knowledge society because of our powerful academic base," Dr Gupta had suggested.

Bihar may have lost much of its mineral and metal resources advantage to Jharkhand and is yet to get the huge compensation package it was promised when the new State was carved out. Ally or no ally, the ruling UPA owes it to the people of Bihar to deliver the compensation package the previous NDA regime had promised.

Bihar needs not only some major handholding from the Centre, but also help from IT majors to set up facilities in the State. Apart from the knowledge industry, if the fertile soil and water resources of the State are well tapped, it can be a win-win scenario for both the rural and urban areas of Bihar.

(Response may be sent to rasheeda@thehindu.co.in)

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