Laloo and aloo: Pak laps up all

‘‘He is a true man of the soil, an ordinary man who speaks his mind and is straightforward. He’s not a Harvard-Cambridge fellow,’’ says PML (N) MP, Tariq Nazeem.

Says Lt Gen (Retd) Talat Masood, ‘‘Laloo is fantastic. He’s a grassroots leader. He knows the pulse of the people, he understands politics. He represents a voice. He is sophisticated in his use of political symbols.’’

Laloo struts about in the Islamabad Sunday market, besieged by crowds of chuckling, beaming, adoring Pakistanis, commenting loudly on the size of the potatoes. ‘‘Gilgit ke aloo? Bahut bade hai Gilgit ke aloo!’’ The next moment, he turns: ‘‘kahan chale gaye hai yeh camera person? Koi bhi camera person nahi nazar aa rahe hai.’’

Laloo is on a high. In a political culture dominated by waderas (landlords), sardars and jagirdars, where the Aitchison College Oxbridge elite controls far more political power than in India simply because in the absence of land reform, massive landowners continue to dominate the state, for the common Pakistani, Laloo is a blast of a peasant utopia. A folksy Bihari milkman risen to the top of the political pyramid.

Abdul Majid, vegetable-seller in Appara market says he had gone to the airport to see Laloo arrive. ‘‘I felt bad when the Indian Supreme Court was not giving him a visa. I really wanted him to get a visa,’’ says Wahid A. Zubairi, a journalist with Business Recorder. ‘‘Everyone knows Laloo here. We all know his Bihari dialect. We all know his famous phrase: ‘Hamko pradhan mantri nahin, king-maker banna hai’. Lots of people have come here from Lahore and Karachi just to see him. We only like to watch him on Zee TV and Star News, although afsos that we don’t get those channels anymore.’’

‘‘Chalo! Chalo!’’ screams Laloo at the crowds, ‘‘bheernahi banao.’’ ‘‘In Pakistan’’, says PML (Q) MP Kashmala Tariq, ‘‘the old feudal families still rule. Farooq Leghari is a huge landowner. His nieces are both Members of Parliament. His son is IT minister. In this kind of family- and tribe- based politics, Laloo is a real democrat, an example of India’s democratic success.’’

The newspapers and TV channels here are full of Laloo. One anchor called him leader of the Indian delegation. He moves around in a posse of cameras.

What about the fodder scam, what about the destruction of Bihar, what about the highly undemocratic act of making your wife the chief minister? ‘‘Oh, none of that matters,’’ says Zubairi, adding: ‘‘It only shows that he’s a man of guts. Everytime someone says Indian democracy is no good, we always say but look at Laloo Prasad Yadav!’’