Their Man and His People

Why Laloo remained undefeatable all these years

Last year, on my way to Patna aboard the Sampurna Kranti Express, a young hawker summed up for us what me and my friends had been discussing for over an hour — what makes Laloo Prasad Yadav an almost undefeatable politician in Bihar. He narrated us an anecdote, which most probably was hearsay: “When this Delhi politician said that Biharis are a scourge to the city and should be sent back, our Laloo replied, ‘Agar wo udhar se ek train Bihari bhejega to hum yahan se do train Bihari bhejenge.’” (If he sends a train full of Biharis back home, I will send two trains full of Biharis to Delhi.) He said this with a great sense of pride in his leader, completely failing to question why he had to migrate in the first place.
But that’s what Laloo did to the downtrodden in Bihar. That’s how he ruled. For 15 long years. Addressing them in their language, dressing up in their style, asking them to break barricades and sit near him while he made his speech in Patna’s Gandhi Maidan, taking them on chopper rides, speaking of them, speaking for them, like no other politician had done in Bihar, just making them feel that he was one them and that His Raj was Their Raj. As journalist Sankarshan Thakur puts it in his book, The Making of Laloo Yadav, The Unmaking of Bihar, “No chief minister of Bihar had ever ruled from the two-room tenement of a peon employed by his government. No chief minister of Bihar had ever held court under a tree by the roadside. No chief minister of Bihar had ever held a Cabinet meeting in the manner of a village chaupal, on a cement platform under open skies.”
In a state caught in an all-pervasive and oppressive feudal structure with a majority of population comprising of SCs, STs, OBCs and Muslims (about 55 percent) he played the caste card more dexterously than any other politician. A product of mid 70s ‘Total Revolution’ movement by the late JP Narayan, Laloo Yadav stormed to the top spot in Bihar government in 1990 riding the Mandal wave.
Laloo’s greatest assets were his instant connect with people and flair for theatre. Even during his days of college politics he would merely stand and wave his ‘gamchha’ (towel) shouting in his rustic style and students would gather in huge numbers. When Laloo held the reins of the state for the first time he was more than a whiff of fresh air for the people, especially the backward castes, who suffered years of corruption, communal violence (1989 Bhagalpur riots), and subjugation by upper caste. He was a storm blowing through, devastating norms and conventions, bending and breaking rules, slicing through redtape, casting aside definitions of what could be done and what couldn’t.
The 1990 Assembly results in Bihar had not been a mandate for Laloo Yadav; he had not even contested the polls. If anything, it had been a mandate against the Congress and a mandate for the National Front coalition that had assumed power in New Delhi under VP Singh. But now that he was the chief minister, he was firm about stamping his personal seal on it. In the very early years of his rule, his antics catapulted him high on the popularity chart. Getting LK Advani arrested while his infamous Rath Yatra was in progress in Bihar, establishing a string of charvaha schools across the sate, raising minimum wages for agricultural workers, regularising slums in Patna and recognising Urdu as an official language were some of the steps that helped him emerge as a messiah of the Backward classes and the minorities. Laloo gave honour and prestige to those deprived sections which were kept out of power for long since Independence.
This was the reason that the mandate that was not for him in 1990 became exclusively his and huge in the 1995 elections despite a media outcry of misrule and corruption (the fodder scam) in his regime and a no-nonsense election commissioner, TN Seshan conducting the elections.
But as his popularity rose and he started feeling more and more secure with his brand of politics, the state became his and he became the State. He treated his officials, even Cabinet secretaries, like peons. “Jo Kehte hain wo kijie, nahin to pankha mein latka denge,” he would say to his officials if they disagreed with any of his illogical proposals. With time, he started keeping more and more to his coterie in the 1, Anne Marg. The connect with the people started thinning. All his promises to his people remained the clichéd political word and except Yadavs, that too the powerful among them, failed to reap any benefits out of his regime. The state fell into the trap of an established anarchy. No law and order. Might was right, everywhere, always. His People started getting disillusioned with Their Man. And that was the reason that the 2000 elections gave Laloo the greatest scare of his life — he was almost ousted by his one time companion Nitish Kumar, but for NDA’s bitter infighting and Laloo’s smart politics. But this scare too did not push Laloo on the right track as he was pretty convinced of his caste politics, his Muslim-Yadav and backward caste vote bank. And that’s exactly what did him in the recently concluded elections. A completely dissatisfied extremely backward caste and a part of the Muslim-Yadav vote bank voted for change. It wasn’t as much Nitish’s victory as much it was Laloo’s defeat.
The fundamental problem with Laloo was that he was never an administrator. He was never interested in talking about development. And he would even justify it: “Humara log development ka kya karega ji. Ee sab upper caste ka chochala hai. Humara log bina chappal ke chalta hai. Uske liye pitch road banwa dijiega to usko chalne mein dikkat hoga.” (What will my people do of development? These are upper caste concepts. My people walk barefeet. If you make pitch roads for them, they will be uncomfortable.) He could never sit and discuss a development project, never look at a file. Cabinet secretaries would be called for meetings and within ten minutes Laloo would get so bored that he would break into jokes and in the next ten minutes the meeting would be over. The chief secretary would sit on the file for eons and central funds would come and return without being utilised. All Laloo was good at was theatre and through all fifteen years of his rule he did just that.
He was also an utterly insecure man. Putting Rabri Devi, his wife, on CM’s chair when he got embroiled in the fodder scam was a blatant example of this. No leader of big stature could stay with him in the party. He was so scared he would never let anyone come up — the reason why Nitish Kumar, the present Bihar CM, parted ways with him after working together for years.
The man’s Raj has ended, but only for five years. No one can dare to write off Laloo. Journalists have done that and suffered the ire of their editors. The next five years under JD(U)-BJP combine will be extremely difficult for Nitish. He is standing on thin ice — the upper caste and the disgruntled backward caste. If he fails to deliver, it could be back to square one.

Two Stones, One Bird

Laloo is using Shahabuddin and others for gains, but who isn’t in Bihar?

Timing is important, be it cricket or politics. On November 5, Laloo Prasad Yadav gave a fine example of this. Two incidents put his troubled Rashtriya Janata Dal (RJD) in the headlines everywhere in the media. Absconding party MP from Siwan, Mohammed Shahabuddin, was suddenly arrested. Before the news could sink in and its implications analysed, another RJD leader, Jaiprakash Narayan Yadav resigned as the Union Minister of State for Water Resources. Both had non-bailable warrants against them and were evading arrest. Both gave in on the eve of the last two phases of polling in Bihar.

Shahabuddin is wanted in over 30 criminal cases including murder, extortion and bank robbery. In August the Bihar police sounded a nation-wide alert against him. But the don mocked the State by appearing at will in various places, granting interviews, relishing tandoori chicken in a Mumbai restaurant, relaxing in the Corbett wilds, fixing dates for his own surrender, even appearing for a law exam in Muzaffarpur! He was everywhere, yet nowhere. Then, as if after a long sabbatical, he suddenly appeared at his 5, Bishwambhar Dass Road residence in Delhi for the police to arrest him. Conveniently, a Bihar police team was camped in Delhi for three days before his arrest.

The timing of Shahabuddin’s arrest could impact polling. Shahabuddin absconding is a slur on Laloo Yadav and the RJD. Shahabuddin in shackles could well produce some manner of sympathy among Muslims and upper castes (of Siwan) whose interests the don protects. Or so the RJD hopes. Such are the cynical methods of politics in Bihar.

As for Jaiprakash Narain Yadav, who had been evading arrest because he illegally had his brother and Jamui RJD candidate released from jail, the resignation is nothing but an attempt by the upa to blunt the Opposition attack both at the Centre and in Bihar.

With his moves on Shahabuddin and Jaiprakash, Laloo hopes to deny the NDA an opportunity to cash in on their misdemeanours. How it works, only the results will tell.

God, Us and the Fear Factor

We all belive in God or do not. We all sometime believed in God and now do not. We all sometime did not believe in God and now do. As a matter of fact, God has been as strange as life itself. Some years ago when I was, I guess, in sixth grade or something, I had gone to visit my brother in Patna. It was this time of the year, I remember. My brother had called me to see (he called it 'enjoy')the madness attached with Chhat Puja. The madness of the faithful. I was quite an atheist then. I still am but not to the extent of being sacrilegious (you migh see me visiting temples, churches, gurudwaras, mosques with friends, even kneeling down as if in a prayer, but 'god' knows how sincere I am). Though, I have no problems with others believing in it. That's their problem. Anyway, while I was in Patna, my brother had a friend called Vijay Thakur. He was quite intelligent, atleast people there thought so. He was preparing for civils. For Biharis it's a national hobby, if you want to know. He was known to be some sort of palmist, at least they believed so. In our society anyone who holds a palm and looks at it carefully with a pensive expression is believed to be a palmist. Anyway, I did not quite beieve in it and asked him, "How do you think it is possible to tell someone's future, present or past by looking at obscure lines on the palm. And what is more surprising is that people believe in it." He smiled and answered, "You don't believe in it, because you belive in yourself. The day your endeavours start failing to produce desired results and success eludes despite best efforts you might start believing in what you do not believe now." I didn't quite agree but I had nothing to argue against so accepted what he said. I still don't belive in palmistry. Not that all my efforts have been yeilding good results and I haven't seen failure. But I believe that he had some grain of truth in what he said. He had appeared for the civils twice and failed to clear. He turned a believer.

Here I am reproducing an article by Hans editor Rajendra Yadav for the sheer power of it. Published in Tehelka, the article traces the existence of God in our fears:

Violence, crime and religion have united in concerted synthesis in contemporary India, and it is not only an urban phenomenon, nor is it an assembly of stray, unconnected incidents. There is an essential unity in these patterns, as it is between god, the market and feudalism. I think a society which lacks a lakshya, an aim, when you don’t think of the future, when future is taken away, people turn desperately towards dharma. Indeed, the person who can laugh wholeheartedly, and when that laughter arrives from the deepest interiors of the soul, that person has no fear of God, nor does he need religion.

This is because God and religion are products of fear; the fear of the present, the fear of the future, the fear of utopia. When a society refuses to fight this fear with a thinking worldview, that is the point when it blindly holds on to the crutches of religion. This is an ideal occasion for the suspension of disbelief and intelligence, for the reassertion of blind faith and superstition. That is why moksha has been sold as liberation, but there is nothing like moksha, it’s fake, it’s a self-conscious farce society inflicts upon itself to escape critical thinking.

Religion pretends to be a thought system, but it is not a thought system. It is blind faith in its pure form, because there is no thought. Superstition is absolute truth, it needs no argument or evidence to prove itself; it is there by the sheer virtue of it claiming to be absolute truth.

How come God allows everything? Rampant anti-social activities, murders, mass murders, rapes, gang rapes, dacoity, cheating, adulteration in medicines, food, essential goods, mass corruption. Everything is condoned by God. Why? The irony is that the man who does all this, is also a firm believer in religion — both the murderer and the victim believe in God. And no one is willing to understand this amazingly transparent contradiction!

There has been a sharp divide between the affluent and deprived classes in India in the last 20 years. That is why all these vulgar celebrations during festivals, with the rich celebrating public exhibitionism of wealth and hedonism, runs like parallel social crimes. These religious outbursts are a kind of fundamentalism of the affluent, and it transcends this or that religion. The rich go through elaborate fasts for spiritual satisfaction but this, as we know, is often hypocritical because they are eating all the time: fruits and milk, if not rice and roti. Besides, they exclude the majority’s experience of pain and accept no social responsibility. They have no concept of the social, in terms of work or ethic or thinking.

In any case, the idea of suffering among the vast majority of poor Indians has been camouflaged by religion. They are told that if you torture your body, you will elevate your soul: this is taught in Christianity, Jainism, Hinduism. It beats me why the communist parties have left the poor in this fake consciousness so that they can enter the fold of the fundamentalists, including the vhp and bjp.

The only thing positive in this new phenomenon is the movement, it can be Chhatt festival, Vaishno Devi yatra or the Kawarias’ long journey. This defies the entrenched logic of sadhus as mafias who refuse to move from one place, who capture land and build temples and become mathadish of all they survey. Contrast this with the activity and movement of the labourers, as they now leave for Bihar to celebrate Chhatt, in thousands. This is also the way they move in search for work. Why don’t the communists reinvent this movement to usher in the struggle for social change? Why can’t they be politically educated in a liberating political philosophy?

The truth is we can’t escape religion in India. We will have to negotiate our way through religious cobwebs. We are in the midst of a mass deception in which both market and God become a deadly synthesis, so that people are in a daze and there is no critical inquiry, no questions, no rebellion, no demand for justice. The seduction of God is also the organised depoliticisation of our society, both urban and rural, where the rich become role models of vulgar exhibitionism and compel the poor to join this farce.

We should remember that Swami Sahajanand and Baba Ramchandra used religion and folk narratives to mobilise the people in the Hindi heartland. Baba Ramchandra used verses from the Ramayana to spread the spirit of rationality and struggle in the 1930s. This is the radical way to break out of this fake godliness of the consumer society where every individual is reduced into a mindless consumer, where women, as in the TV serials, are cajoled to celebrate their own slavery. Why else is this commercial boom now linked to karva chauth?

It’s time to reject the shopkeepers of moksha. It’s time to destroy the violence, crime and religion nexus. It’s time to look back in anger at the bitter realism of India, the India of starvation deaths, and redefine our gaze at the future. Without the fear of fear, or the fear of god.