Once again, the Rashtriya Janata Dal chief Lalu Prasad is behind bars, this time convicted for five years for his involvement in the colossal fodder scam. He has lost his Lok Sabha seat and is disqualified from electoral politics for 11 years. The Congress and its UPA allies’ insidious attempt to save his Lok Sabha membership through the now infamous Ordinance to protect convicted legislators failed. And so ends any probability of an alliance with Lalu’s RJD in the 2014 polls, to cash in on the Muslim-Yadav votes that the Congress had hoped for. Of course, the Congress has almost landed a much bigger fish in the form of Nitish Kumar and his Janata Dal (United).

My thoughts go back to Patna and the villages surrounding Lalu’s constituency of Madhepura that I had visited in 1996, when the fodder scam net was closing in around the then Bihar Chief Minister.

It was a time when P.V. Narasimha Rao had dexterously saved his minority government with the support he had garnered dubiously from the Jharkhand Mukti Morcha (JMM) MPs.

In hut after hut, street after street, I heard a single sentiment: “ Aap mediawalo ko Laluji ka bhrashtachar nazar aata hei kyunki woh pichdi jaati ke hain, lekin Narasimha Rao ka bhrashtachar nazar nahi aata kyunki voh Brahmin hain.” (You media guys are quick to spot Lalu’s corruption because he belongs to a backward class, but you turn a blind eye to Narasimha Rao’s corruption because he is a Brahmin.)

Lalu’s constituents in Madhepura, as well as in other villages near Patna, dared the “authorities” to dismiss him as an MLA. “We will collect money to canvass for him and ensure his victory and make him chief minister again,” was the defiant refrain.

Lalu, the Messiah

So why was Lalu so popular? One villager summed it up neatly when he said: “ Laluji ne hum pichhdo ko zubaan di hai …” (Lalu has given us, the backward classes, a voice).

The inhuman treatment meted out to the BC and OBCs of Bihar by the zamindars is only too well known. I was given graphic descriptions of how they were compelled to either leave the road when a zamindar approached, and hide in the fields, or crawl on their knees till he passed by. Till Lalu the messiah appeared on the scene.

But Lalu’s swagger and arrogance, the manner in which his cronies looted the exchequer, the deteriorating governance levels in Bihar, gross under-development, extortions, kidnappings and daylight killings resulted in the people voting out the RJD and ushering in the JD(U)-BJP combo. This alliance worked well till Nitish recently broke away over the meteoric rise of Narendra Modi in the BJP.

But as news of Lalu’s conviction and imprisonment came in, panelists on television, who tried to talk about Lalu’s importance in the social engineering milieu, were shouted down by angry anchors. “Are you defending his mega corruption?” they retorted.

Nitish under a cloud

Similarly, nobody paid much heed to a subdued Rabri Devi’s first question when Lalu was taken into custody: ‘‘What about Nitish Kumar’s involvement in the chara ghotala (fodder scam)?’’ But now the Jharkhand High Court has asked the CBI to explain why Nitish Kumar and his party colleague Shivanand Tiwari should not be included in the investigation. A PIL filed by social activist Mithilesh Kumar Singh has charged that the Animal Husbandry department official Shyam Bihari Sinha had admitted to paying Rs 1.4 crore as bribe to Nitish, who was then in the Samata Party, and Rs 30-35 lakh to Tiwari, for election expenses in 1995.

That explains why Nitish has suddenly gone quiet on the fodder scam. The Jharkhand court’s query to the CBI has come as manna from heaven for not only the BJP and the Left parties, but also the RJD. Also, Nitish’s reputation as a clean politician is in jeopardy. The BJP leaders are now jeering at Nitish, the attack being led by his one-time deputy and BJP leader Sushil Kumar Modi, who was the original petitioner in the fodder scam in the 1990s.

The conviction of Lalu, as well as Congress Rajya Sabha MP Rasheed Masood, who has been sentenced to four years’ imprisonment for his involvement in a medical seat scam, is only the tip of the iceberg.

If at all there is some hope of our political system being cleansed of criminalisation and corruption, we need to thank the Supreme Court for its landmark verdict this July, which cleared the grounds for the immediate disqualification of legislators convicted.

The shenanigans of the Congress core group as well as the Union Cabinet to stall this verdict through an ordinance were scuttled by Rahul Gandhi’s now famous “Ordinance is nonsense” outburst at the Delhi Press Club.

More to come

If impartial investigations and justice are allowed to have their way, many more of our not-so-honourable MPs and MLAs will soon stand disqualified from electoral politics. Even though the average age of our netas is rather high, the RJD chief is already 65, and the next election he can hope to contest will be when he is 76!

This, provided a higher court does not exonerate him. Our political rulers tried their best to ensure that during the pendency of appeals in higher courts, the criminal and the corrupt netas could continue to enjoy the spoils of power. Till the Supreme Court spoilt their party.

A National Election Watch analysis during last year’s presidential election found that 31 per cent of our MPS, MLAs/MLCs have criminal cases pending against them, and one-third of this number is charged with serious offences such as rape, murder, kidnapping, and extortion.

In another recent report, it noted that about 30 per cent of Lok Sabha MPs and 17 per cent of Rajya Sabha MPs have criminal records. Worse, in many parts of India, politicians with criminal records are twice as likely to win elections compared to those with a clean slate! The Shiv Sena tops the chart when illustrating this point.

The most tragic part of this story is that every mainstream political party, including those who take the high moral ground on corruption and criminalisation of politics, has such tainted legislators. Hopefully, before the 2014 polls, we’ll see many more legislators losing their seats and being disqualified from contesting elections.

Responses to >rasheeda.bhagat@thehindu.co.in and >blfeedback@thehindu.co.in

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