Rail, Road, Rahul

Nitish is cruising on development, Lalu is peddling a turnaround story, Rahul is planning for the future, and everyone else seems to be shunning ‘Modi’

Rajendra Prasad was India’s first president. He served two terms. But before India became a republic and got itself a president, Prasad chaired India’s arguably most eminent and illustrious body ever: the Constituent Assembly. Its members examined laws that governed the civilised world, and gave India one of the world’s most comprehensive constitutions. Ironically, Prasad belonged to a part of Bihar that has since gained infamy for lawlessness.

If Siwan was made famous in the mid-20th century by Rajendra Prasad, by the turn of the century it was notorious for the criminal-politician Mohammed Shahabuddin. Habituated to cocking a snook at the law, he was elected Siwan’s MP four times despite numerous criminal charges (including murder) against him. But things are beginning to look up now, ever since he was convicted in one of the many cases against him in 2007 and sentenced to life imprisonment.
Shahabuddin’s days are done. He was a member of Lalu Prasad’s Rashtriya Janata Dal (RJD), which ran Bihar before Nitish Kumar’s Janata Dal United (JD-U) took charge in 2005, in alliance with the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP). And as Chief Minister, Nitish Kumar has done quite well for Bihar’s image. There have been 50,000 criminal convictions in five years.

Cast a glance at the rows of children in the morning sun outside the government school in Ziradehi village, and you see change. Assembly over, 30-year-old Nayyar Jahan ushers the children into their classrooms. She has completed five years as a teacher appointed under the state government’s Shiksha Mitra (friends of education) scheme. “There were about 200 students enrolled here when I joined and not many turned up, now there are about 450,” she says. Her own children study at Don Bosco High School in nearby Siwan town—because when she joined, she didn’t think the school was worth anything. That perception of government schools is changing. Enrolments are up. The state government provides mid-day meals and even uniforms under a new scheme to poor children. It has also distributed 1.2 million bicycles to girl students of Class IX to lure them back to schools. “When I came here from Deoria after marriage ten years ago, this place didn’t have a proper road. Now, things have changed,” she explains. The road that Nayyar talks of is indeed a smooth one now, part of the many that the Nitish Kumar government has repaired and rebuilt.

It leads down to the village primary health centre—upgraded from an additional primary health centre three years ago. Though only two of the five doctors posted here are present, that’s up from no doctors at all a few years ago, says Mohammed Babu Shah, who runs a small shop at a mazaar (saint’s grave) in Siwan. Also, unlike earlier, medicines are available. “I will vote for the present government. At least my children go to school now,” he says, even if it means defying the way Muslims are expected to vote in Bihar.

If the Nitish Kumar government’s initiatives indeed translate into a renewed electoral mandate (results are due on 24 November), Bihar’s voters may yet give up voting along the caste and communal lines that have reduced Bihar’s politics to a balance sheet of identities.

Bihar is at the crossroads. The polls will decide whether it takes the path laid down by the JD(U)-BJP, or the one that Lalu Prasad’s RJD is offering with a ‘new improved’ tag in alliance with Ram Vilas Paswan’s Lok Janshakti Party (LJP). It is often said in Patna that Lalu Prasad ruled the state with his jokes for 15 years and reduced the state to a joke. Now, in response to Nitish’s well-laid roads, Lalu is peddling his turnaround of the Indian Railways to woo voters. “I won’t just promise, but I am determined to do it. I changed the Railways first, now I will change Bihar,” goes his catchline. By keeping his MY (Muslim-Yadav) arithmetic in order, Lalu managed to rule for 15 years. In the last election, he and Paswan (who is relying on Dalit support) were pitched against each other, but their vote share together was higher than that of the incumbent JD-U-BJP combine.

Now they are together and hope that the arithmetic works in their favour. Only, five years have elapsed since then, and the state has seen signs of development after a long hiatus, says Shaibal Gupta, director of the Patna-based Asian Development Research Institute. Gupta says that Bihar’s spike in voter turnout (up about 9 per cent from the Lok Sabha polls) is an indicator of people’s enhanced interest in politics. “Nitish has created a new constituency among women through positive discrimination in panchayati raj institutions (PRIs) and teacher recruitments,” says Gupta.

In five years, Nitish has also chipped away at the support base that Lalu and Paswan have held as their own. The state has reserved 20 per cent of all PRI seats for Extremely Backward Castes (EBC) and Dalits. In June this year, the government lifted a 16-year-old ban on recognition of Muslim madrassas as schools, paving the way for government grants. Their teachers are now paid on par with their counterparts in government schools. The budget allocation for the state minorities welfare department this year is over Rs 121 crore, up from Rs 3 crore in 2004-05 under the RJD regime. From Rs 100 crore spent on fencing graveyards, to civil services coaching stipends for minority students and special grants for divorced Muslim women, the Nitish government has tried hard to sway the community. The CM has also succeeded in breaking up the minority cells of both the RJD and LJP. To break into Paswan’s stronghold, he created the Mahadalit Commission in 2007 to identify the most backward among Dalits. The Commission found only Paswans as having fared okay, classifying the other 21 of the state’s 22 Dalit subcastes as Mahadalits.

Lalu stayed in power on the strength of MY voters and EBCs. Poll after poll, he would proudly proclaim EBCs as his djinns (spirits). “Now Laluji’s djinn has become Nitish Kumar’s djinn,” quips Bachcha Babu Rajab of Saidpur village in Sonepur (one of Rabri Devi’s two constituencies), an EBC voter. He irons clothes for a living and says that he makes sure his son Sonu attends school so that he can go to college some day.

At some distance, in Manjhi, Congress General Secretary Rahul Gandhi’s chopper descends outside a school in Jalalpur, Chapra. “We (the UPA) worked for Backwards and Dalits, and on issues of poverty, and you brought us back to power in 2009,” he tells the crowds. “We have brought in the world’s largest employment programme, which ensures 100 days’ employment. But here, people don’t get more than 30 days’. Most money is sent to Bihar for the Indira Awaas Yojana…The poor don’t get that money, the rich do,” he says. The crowd claps. In Bihar, the poor are pitched against the poorer everywhere, and Rahul Gandhi is the new messiah of the poorest. His presence in the campaign has turned the Congress from a fence-sitter to something of a player. Not content watching the electoral armies of Lalu and Nitish slug it out, the Centre’s ruling party has jumped into the battle with the promise of development to out-develop Nitish.
In his rallies, Nitish compares his Bihar with that of Lalu’s. But Rahul Gandhi wants Bihar to compare the state with Delhi or Mumbai. His message: the Congress is the natural choice of governance and your best bet in the future. The ‘future’ aspect is important, for that’s what the party has its eyes set on.

From the time the first Congress candidate list appeared in New Delhi, Rahul Gandhi’s fingerprints were clearly discernible on it. Of the 243 candidates fielded—contesting all the seats this time—118 are below the age of 40 (a third are under 35). Also, 47 Congress tickets have gone to Muslims, who constitute 16.5 per cent of the state’s population and are said to hold sway in a quarter of the seats. “The idea was to give tickets to those who could be recognised as Congress representatives even after the elections,” reveals a source privy to the strategy formulated by Rahul Gandhi’s team. “At this stage, winning a large number of seats is not the goal, but proving to sceptics that the Congress can go it alone. The BJP will obviously try to run it down as a Congress failure if we don’t get a sizeable share of seats in Bihar, but the idea here is to convince the average Congressman in Bihar that the party will not make opportunistic alliances at his cost,” he adds.

Overall, the Congress is hopeful of doing better than it did last time. Catch Congress leaders on the campaign trail and they speak of a Rahul wave in the state. Catch one privately at an airport lounge, and you hear that the party hopes to more than double its tally of the last election (of course, in the last Assembly, it won less than 5 per cent of the seats). The Congress is closely watching how the BJP fares, and if electoral arithmetic permits, it would like to drive a wedge between the JD-U and BJP. “If we can cross the 30 seat mark, who knows, we might end up in government with Nitish Kumar,” says a senior Congress leader off the campaign trail.

For the Congress, anything beyond doubling its tally will be a bonus, irrespective of who comes to power in the state. If Nitish Kumar does not win, it could mean the end of the National Democratic Alliance (NDA) here.

Whatever the relationship between the JD-U and BJP, their victory would help marginalise Lalu and Paswan, who are no longer of use to the Congress; so long as these two remain relevant in Bihar politics, the Congress cannot achieve Rahul Gandhi’s dream of an all-powerful Congress at the Centre.

Nitish’s return to power, goes the assessment, would end Lalu’s potency as a vote catcher, which could possibly shift Bihar’s political paradigm from an emphasis on identity to one on governance. “Caste will not vanish if Nitish Kumar’s government is voted back to power,” says Gupta, “but it will not be the sole deciding factor in Bihar’s future elections.”

Any decrease in caste consciousness would work to the Congress’ advantage. However, if the Lalu-Paswan combine does wrest power from Nitish Kumar, the Congress can at least take solace in the fact that the primary challenger to its position at the Centre—the BJP-led NDA—will lose an important stronghold.

Nitish has never been comfortable holding hands with the communal side of the BJP. It is because he is in a position to dictate terms in the coalition that the likes of Gujarat Chief Minister Narendra Modi and Pilhibit MP Varun Gandhi are not campaigning in Bihar. For those from the BJP who have turned up, it is only pragmatic to play the junior partner. The BJP is almost scared of showing up in all its saffron glory, except in its bastions. “Last time, the NDA came on the promise of change. There was hope among voters; now that hope has given way to confidence in the NDA government in the state,” senior party leader Sushma Swaraj tells Open in Patna. “People are not voting on emotion. For the first time, development is an issue in the state,” she adds.

The next morning, she creates a furore at a press conference. “Modi’s magic and charisma have worked in Gujarat… but it is not necessary that everybody’s magic works at every place,” she says at the party’s Patna office, while explaining why Narendra Modi is not campaigning: “In Bihar, the magic of Nitish Kumar and Sushil Kumar Modi is at work… and we are confident of our victory for carrying forward development.”

A controversy erupts within the party, but dies down soon. This is a controversy the BJP cannot afford to stoke. Party-sponsored billboards in Patna proudly proclaim: ‘Nitish-Sushil phir ek baar (once again)’. It doesn’t mind dropping ‘Modi’ from Deputy Chief Minister Sushil Modi’s name. If that’s what it takes to be part of the government in Bihar again, that’s what it takes: no Modi.

About The Author

Jatin Gandhi

Jatin Gandhi has covered politics and policy for over a decade now for print, TV and the web. He is Deputy Political Editor at Open.