The BJP has recently lost Sushil Modi, a senior leader and popular face in Bihar.
DM Diwakar
The emergence of Bihar’s new political leadership signifies the swan song of stalwarts from the Jayaprakash Narayan movement. No corner of the state’s polity seems untouched by such a change of guard. Let’s see how this ‘handover’ might affect the state’s political calculus.
Tejashwi Yadav of the Rashtriya Janata Dal launched himself when his father Lalu Prasad was imprisoned on corruption charges. Lalu Prasad has mass appeal among the Yadavs and Muslims, who constitute 14.7 percent and 17.7 percent of the state’s population; he also has substantial support from the Other Backward Classes and Dalits. Therefore, Tejashwi has inherited a strong legacy. He established his leadership at the last assembly election, winning 75 seats out of the total 243 and emerging as the largest party. He impressed the masses by bringing back the issue-based politics of employment, education, health and inflation.
Chirag Paswan of the Lok Janshakti Party endeavours to continue the legacy of his father Ram Vilas. His support is among SCs, Dusadh and Dhari who have a 5.31 percent presence, followed by Chamar, Mochi, Rabidas, Rohidas and Charmakar at 5.26 percent, and Musahars at 3.09 percent. He is contesting for the Hajipur Lok Sabha seat against Shiv Chandra Ram, a popular Dalit leader from the RJD.
The BJP has recently lost Sushil Modi, a senior leader and popular face in Bihar. The party has negligible youth representation in the state at present. It has been experimenting on weakening RJD’s base by earlier fielding Ram Kripal Yadav, Nityanand Rai, Upendra Kushwaha and now Samrat Choudhary; but it has not succeeded in snatching the vote base of Lalu Prasad.
It’s a similar situation for the Janata Dal (United), which is yet to launch a young person who can take charge after Nitish Kumar. All these prominent faces of Bihar, who emerged from the JP movement to restore democracy in 1974, are now near the end of their politics.
Bihar has been a laboratory of politics for the people down the ages. The Champaran Satyagraha, radical peasant movements and JP movement are a few landmarks in that legacy. Although Bihar was one of the first states to implement a law abolishing zamindari, land reforms remained on the back seat. The socialist regime of Karpoori Thakur tried to address several issues of social justice, but left the land issues largely untouched.
As a result, the state was engulfed in fierce land struggles and witnessed massacres by private armies in alliance with the state. JP held the ruling classes responsible for delaying land redistribution, which resulted in counter-retaliation too. Nobody from the private armies was found guilty. The courts neither passed a stricture against the investigating officers, nor instructed the reopening of cases.
JP’s mobilisation was the next landmark. Chhatra Sangharsh Vahini, Tarun Shanti Sena and other groups came together against the issues of unemployment, inflation and corruption. This mobilisation turned out to be the breeding ground for the mass leaders of today—Lalu Prasad, Ram Vilas, Nitish Kumar and Sushil Modi. They have continued ruling the state with a few exceptions.
Lalu Prasad weakened the feudal clutches and empowered the voiceless. Backward classes and Dalits had never before felt so empowered to deal with the feudal forces, the bureaucracy and the police. He strongly dealt with communal forces too and stopped L K Advani’s Rathyatra. This act made him a champion of minorities, particularly of Muslims. When V P Singh implemented the Mandal Commission report, Lalu Prasad made it an occasion to win the confidence of the backwards and Dalits in Bihar. Hence the MY support along with the OBCs.
Lalu’s idea of Charvaha Vidyalay— an experiment in holding classes in field settings—got appreciated globally. However, it did not take off because of elitism among the bureaucrats, who were generally not happy with Lalu’s regime because of two reasons. One, the RJD cadres started interacting with the bureaucracy as alert citizens. Two, there was a curious pattern of public expenditure shooting up in the last quarter every financial year; Lalu stopped this ‘March loot’. However, Lalu was later implicated in the fodder scam and installed his wife Rabri Devi in the top seat.
Ram Vilas tried to compete with Lalu, but could not excel in state politics although he won parliamentary election with a record margin from Hajipur. Though he was a seasoned leader and acceptable to everyone, he lost Hajipur later and got back to parliament through the Rajya Sabha.
Nitish Kumar, despite belonging to the Kurmi caste that has a meagre 2.87 percent share of the population, has made himself indispensable in the state’s politics. The upper castes and the bureaucracy supported him as a substitute to Lalu. Reservation, stipend to students and prohibition made him more popular than others to the state’s women.
Creating the Dalit Vikas Mission to weaken the Paswans and further segregating the OBCs were masterstrokes in social engineering. This is why Nitish has been important to all comers. Division of the secular vote makes the BJP comfortable and opponents weaker.
However, changing his position time and again has dented his credentials. A recent mysterious display of BJP’s election symbol has kept people guessing. That JD(U) leaders are showing indifference and Tejashwi is showing an extra-normal behaviour towards his ‘Chacha’ Nitish are indications that a new political script is probably being written for post-election Bihar.
Courtesy : TNIE
Note: This news is originally published in thenewindianexpress.com and was used solely for non-profit/non-commercial purposes exclusively for Human Rights.
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