Kaimur Makeover

Incidentally, of the two MPs, one fashioned herself as the Bihari variant of the Ku Klux Klan, professing venom and hate against the plebian classes; the other, with his plethora of criminal activities, not only sullied the image of the social justice movement in the state but also gave an entirely different meaning to it. Both these contrasting ‘icons’ of Bihar’s politics were convicted — one is facing the death sentence and the other a life sentence — as soon as the state machinery abandoned its earlier complacence in enforcing the rule of law.

The grammar of politics is changing in Bihar. No election hereafter cannot be fought on the basis of the earlier benchmarks of muscle and firepower. The most under-governed and underdeveloped state of the country, for the first time after -Independence, is working out a new development architecture.

There are still many gaps and it will take years before tangible results are visible. Yet, the discourse on development and its social or political matrix has changed in the state. The prophets of doom, quick to write Bihar’s epitaphs earlier, are now revising their script.

The two-day ‘Chintan Shivir’ or introspection session organised by the RJD at Ramgarh in Kaimur district of Bihar last week, must be seen in this backdrop. It is no coincidence that the RJD supremo opted for this district for this exercise in collective reflection. Possibly this was the only district where some semblance of governance was visible even during the RJD reign. In contrast to the rout of RJD all over the state in 2005, the party swept Kaimur district.

Lalu Prasad Yadav spent nearly two full days with his political associates at the chintan shivir, indicating his efforts to reinvent himself. Apart from his rhetoric against the NDA government in Bihar on expected lines, the conclave was marked by the absence of his characteristic swagger.

With a functioning state in Bihar, the terms of social mobilisation are changing. With the eclipse of ideology since the JP movement, the building of party structures and nurturing of cadres were given up. Dialogue and debate within the party, which lead to a sense of ownership in the cadre, had become things of the past. The co-option of criminals or criminal gangs in lieu of building the party structure became the hallmark of all mainstream political parties in the state.

When Nitish Kumar and Lalu Prasad Yadav successfully co-scripted the social justice upsurge in Bihar in the early 1990s, its impact could not create new benchmarks in governance. Apart from other reasons, the split of the duo failed to create that ambience. While the two leaders ensured banishment of the feudal remnants from the citadel of state power, their victory was more political than administrative. The exit of Nitish Kumar and the sweeping electoral victory of 1995 in the Bihar assembly made Yadav almost politically invincible. Unfortunately, persons said to have a mind of their own within Lalu’s fold, started getting marginalised.

Politics in Bihar became ‘demand oriented’ rather than ‘delivery oriented’. In any case, delivery of an inclusive agenda through the archaic, hostile and almost non-existing network of state structures, was not an easy proposition. In these circumstances, while Lalu Yadav did consolidate the forces that spoke in the name of social justice, he failed in giving administrative expression to this cataclysm. Now Nitish Kumar, with the mandate of the ‘coalition of extremes’ and with an eye for detail, is using the same state structures in scripting an inclusive delivery system.

In future, any political party that wants to make an electoral breakthrough in the state will have to do some introspection. Without a cohesive agenda and a cadre-building exercise, political parties would run the risk of electoral obsolence.

Will last week’s Chintan Shivir motivate Lalu Yadav to jettison his earlier indifference to all things that have to do with governance, in order to and try and compete with Nitish Kumar on the terms set by the latter? If the answer is in the affirmative, the duo can reconverge to script new vistas of development, and an unprecedented sub-national cohesion, in Bihar.

The writer is member secretary, Asian Development Research Institute (ADRI), Patna