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Journalism of Courage
A little more than a week before the first phase of voting in Bihar, political parties wrestled each other a thousand kilometres from the state, on the banks of the Yamuna in Delhi.
On Monday, as the sun set and the rituals of the first arghya of this year’s Chhath Puja wound down, Delhi Chief Minister Rekha Gupta travelled down the river in a flotilla of boats, waving to devotees packing the banks at Sonia Vihar in Northeast Delhi — most of them Purvanchalis who live, work, and importantly, vote in the national capital.
They waved back enthusiastically to the Chief Minister, and many of them captured the moment on their mobile phones – perhaps to send pictures and videos to friends and family back home in Bihar and eastern UP.
As the throngs of devotees started to disperse to the various pandals along the waterfront, the message boomed loud and clear over the loudspeakers erected by the various Chhath Puja samitis:
“Hamari is sanatan ki sarkaar ne Purvanchaliyon ko Yamuna kinare khade kar diya hai, apne vote ki takat dekhiye. Abhi aur aage jaana hai. Aaplogon ke samarthan se hamey jihadiyon ko bhi bhagana hai. (Look at the power of your vote, this Sanatani government has ensured that Purvanchalis are able to celebrate Chhath by the Yamuna. Now, we have to go farther. We have to chase away the jihadis.)”
This Chhath is the first since the Covid-19 pandemic in which devotees have been allowed to take a dip in the Yamuna. The state government and Municipal Corporation of Delhi, both with the BJP, have pulled out all the stops in the attempt to make the festival a success. Posters have been put up across the city thanking Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Chief Minister Gupta from the “entire Purvanchali community”.
Among the devotees on the riverbank, there is acknowledgement both of the developmental work done by Bihar’s Chief Minister Nitish Kumar and of the shortcomings of his model.
“Earlier you couldn’t leave the house after sunset. Now, it is secure enough to roam around even at 10 pm,” 38-year old Ravinder Singh says, speaking approvingly of law and order under Bihar’s NDA government. “I had not seen roads in my village since childhood, but now there are roads in the entire village,” he adds.
As Ravinder continues to speak about improvements in government schools, his 12-year-old son chimes in: “Our school has desks and the teacher comes to teach us regularly. I can’t leave school before 3 pm.”
Ravinder says he belongs to the OBC Kushwaha caste. With him is a friend who has a somewhat less enthusiastic view of the NDA government.
“I agree with you that Nitish and Modi have done a lot for Bihar. But I have a complaint. Modiji is setting up factories in Uttar Pradesh and Gujarat, why not in Bihar?” the friend, who declines to give his name, asks Ravinder.
Ravinder has a philosophical answer: the second floor of a house can only be constructed after the first floor has been completed; now that basic road infrastructure has been created, factories and employment too will come to Bihar.
Chintu Rai, 40, a Bihari migrant who drives an autorickshaw in Delhi, says Nitish built roads and provided electricity to people. “If there are roads and electricity, people can have small businesses of their own, because there are not a lot of factories in Bihar.”
Given a choice, he would not have left Bihar, Chintu says: “Majboori se hi aadmi majdoori karta hai. Kaun chahta hai apnon se door Dilli mein aake rehna? (A man becomes a labourer only due to necessity. Who wants to live away from their families in Delhi?)”
At Vasudev Ghat on Delhi’s eastern edge, families from Bhagalpur, Siwan, and Darbhanga sit in clusters amid stalls selling tea, ganna juice, and litti-chokha, discussing the elections in Bihar.
There are mentions of Nitish, debates on RJD leader Tejashwi Yadav’s speeches, and arguments over the impact Jan Suraaj leader Prashant Kishor will have. “Vote to Bihar mein padega, par baat yahaan ho rahi hai (Votes will be cast in Bihar, but the conversation is happening here),” laughs Shalini Pandey, sipping tea.
A group of women are sitting on the wet soil, talking and taking pictures with their phones. They don’t think much of any of the parties in the fray in Bihar. “Ab vote dena hai, par sab ek jaise hain (One has to vote, but they are all the same),” says one. Another agrees: “Lalu ke time mein gareebi thi, Nitish ke time mein berozgaari hai (There was poverty in Lalu’s time, there is unemployment now).”
The conversation slips easily from politics to prices to train fares.
As dusk falls over the ghat, children light firecrackers, running and playing around the small mounds of soil at the Puja sthals, adorned with colours and flowers. Teenagers roam in groups, taking selfies with the river as the backdrop. Hawkers are selling a range of things – cream rolls to tiaras to earrings. Younger people throng a tattoo shop.
At Sonia Vihar, some devotees who live nearby have left, with the intention to return for the second arghya at dawn on Tuesday. Others who have come from far head to the tents erected for devotees, where arrangements have been made for them. North East Delhi Manoj Tiwari, a former singer and actor, shows up and regales the crowd with his hit number Haan hum Bihari hain ji.
As the evening turns into night, the air gets chilly. Shankar Mandal, wrapped in a blanket, adds more oil to his diyas, trying to keep them burning by placing seven large baskets of fruit around them as the wind from the river sweeps over the ghat.
Mandal supports Prime Minister Modi and is extremely happy with the arrangements for Chhath in Delhi, but he also believes that other parties deserve a chance in Bihar.
“We gave Nitish 20 years. Ab [RJD leader] Tejashwi [Yadav] ko bhi mauka dena chahiye… Aur kuchh saal baad [Jan Suraaj leader] Prashant Kishor ko bhi mauka denge. Mauka milega tab hi toh kuchh karke dikhayenge. Jaise BJP ko 27 saal ke baad Delhi mein mauka mila… (Tejashwi should get an opportunity, and after a few years Prashant Kishor as well. It is only when people get a chance that they can accomplish something. Like the BJP got a chance in Delhi after 27 years),” Mandal says.
Not far away sits 24-year-old Anjali Yadav from Rohtas, newly wed, surrounded by relatives, and also wrapped in a blanket. She does not buy the claims of development under Nitish.
“There has been no work,” she says flatly. “Sab bakwaas hai. Hamare yahaan toh Laluji ke samay hi sadak bana tha (This is all nonsense. In our village, roads were built during Lalu’s tenure).”
Ram Babu Saini, who belongs to the Nishad caste, is happy that Mukesh Sahani, leader of the Vikassheel Insaan Party (VIP), with a base among Mallah (boatmen) castes such as Nishad and Nonia, is the Deputy Chief Minister candidate of the Opposition Mahagathbandhan. But days before the election, he is confused, he said.
“Nitish did some very good work in the beginning,” Saini says, referring to the time when Nitish was called “Sushasan (Good Governance) Babu”. “But in the last 10 years, nothing much has happened. Tejashwi is too young to become CM and PK (Prashant Kishor) is inexperienced. I like Modiji. But I don’t know who to vote for,” he says.
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