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.