One of the longest surprises among the intelligentsia has been the relative political stability in Bihar in spite of the daily reports in all forms of media that Bihar is increasingly slipping into a morass of non-development and lawlessness. The commonly held view is that everything in Bihar can be attributed to the politics of caste. Yet this is really a middle-class view and Bihar is a symbol of the middle-class monopoly on knowledge dissemination.One of the important reasons for this is simply that the middle class has been unable to dominate Bihar. The middle-class view would have us believe that Bihar (maybe UP also) is an exceptional state in India where primordial loyalties like caste still hold sway in politics. This is an exceptional instance of deliberate ignorance. Forget about the whole of India, where caste, religion and ethnic ties are used to a lesser or greater degree for mobilisation in electoral battles, even in a place like Delhi it would be only at the peril of overlooking facts to believe that the decision to nominate Sahib Singh Verma and Sajjan Kumar, the two Jat politicians, by the BJP and the Congress respectively, in the Jat-dominated Outer Delhi constituency is not an instance of acceding to politics based on primordial ties.For that matter, one of the most brazen displays of the triumph of primordial loyalties took place not in any ‘backward’ state but in one of the economically most developed ones, Gujarat. But since the basic thrust of governance in these areas appears committed to upholding middle-class interests, these ‘minor’ issues are swept under the carpet.While the gradual weakening of the state in Bihar has definitely placed middle class and elite groups on fragile ground, whether this process has also adversely affected the lower classes as compared to the period when the state was ‘functioning’ is something which is yet to be quantified. But a more contemporary comparison of Bihar with other states across India reveals a pattern. No state in India, barring perhaps the states that have a tradition of being governed by Left Front governments, can boast of achieving anything significant for their lower-class population. The wholesale negligence of this group by the ‘developed’ functioning states was perhaps at the heart of the outright rejection of the ‘feel-good’ NDA government at the Centre and the ‘good-governing’ states of Andhra and MP by underprivileged groups.Given the class background of different states of India in general and of the Indian state in particular, it is now becoming obvious that the numerically superior groups of the underprivileged classes have reconciled to the realities of power structures and have taken a more pragmatic approach towards it than perhaps its theorists. Confronting the stark reality of Indian political life on its face, this group does not seem to be greatly perturbed by the relative merits or demerits of a strong or weak state, for them any political coalition that can provide even token upward mobility or a gesture of enhancing their social standing against erstwhile dominant groups will always appear more appealing.In Bihar, for the last one and half decade, Laloo Prasad has perfected this art more genuinely than all his opponents. A journey through the whispers of the poor people in Bihar reveals that they didn’t care at all about the scams Laloo was involved in and whether he was further corroding the already brittle foundations of the Bihar economy, as long as he was paying back their long-time tormenters in the same coin. Laloo or no Laloo, underprivileged groups were going to remain in the same economic plight, but at least here was someone who gave them an opportunity to socially rear their head.Political competition in Bihar, as Laloo has succeeded in setting its agenda over the years, is not only about controlling the formal space of the state—since its superseding authority has been successfully undermined not only by design but also because of its failure to cater to larger needs. It’s forging a dominant political-social coalition which, in the absence of a strong state, can effectively raise the bogey of abstract values of ‘rights’ and ‘dignity’ instead of the more tangible issues of material gain. Experience has shown that tangible gains seldom lead to the betterment of the poor people. So why should they not yearn for abstract values?The indifferent and, at times, even anti-middle class politics of Laloo perfectly suits the social and hence political aspirations of the underprivileged classes. The near one-to-one correspondence between caste and class in Bihar makes this competition appear as caste conflict and caste-based mobilisation, and Laloo does not seem to mind this as long as he is reaping the political benefits of this competition. The political economy of non-development in Bihar and the perseverance of Laloo Prasad since the Nineties, therefore, actually indicate two things. First, it is a tragic commentary on the nature of the Indian state itself, that has failed, criminally failed, to make even a token gesture of bringing its underprivileged classes within the purview of development that, in turn, could raise their expectations and bring self-respect. Secondly—and the one which emerges from the first—that despite the unprecedented social background of the power structure that has emerged in Bihar, it has shied away from taking up the agenda of economic development.The more pertinent issue here, however, seen from the perspective of the social constituency that Laloo represents, is whether such economic development is at all necessary since such developments have failed to percolate down to their level. For Laloo it is convenient to mobilise this class and choose not to perform because of the bare minimum expectations of the underprivileged.The writer is a Fellow, Asian Development Research Institute (ADRI), Patna
