Rashtriya Janata Dal supremo, Laloo Prasad Yadav, has been bailed out yet again by the Centre. The mandate of the Bihar elections which was held earlier this year had clearly gone against him and his family who had ruled Bihar for 15 long years. If Laloo could not form the government in Bihar, he also showed himself incapable of breaking the irreconcilable deadlock that had emerged in the aftermath of the election. But when it looked as if an alternative formation might be able to break away some MLAs from the Lok Janashakti Party to try and stake a credible claim, the assembly was immediately dissolved.The prospects of an elected government being formed were still uncertain and the deadlock in Bihar might have continued. Even if there was the threat of horse-trading such suspicions needed to be established. It would have honoured the mandate thrown up by the last election better, if the Centre had first ensured that all possibilities of forming a government within the existing assembly had been exhausted. It was premature to come to the conclusion that no one was going to be in a position to form a government. Waiting a few weeks more, until the sustainability of all possible combinations had been explored and exhausted, would have given the decision to dissolve the assembly at least an aura of credibility. The unholy haste with which the assembly has been dissolved therefore suggests only one conclusion: the Centre has gone out of its way and used every constitutional contrivance to protect and further Laloo Prasad Yadav’s brand of politics and governance. In the process it has grievously let down a state that was waiting to be delivered from a regime that had all but destroyed its present and blighted its future prospects.What the state’s voters will make of all the grandstanding, bargaining, constitutional trade-offs that have been on display during the last few weeks is still an open question. What they make of these circus acts being staged ostensibly to protect secularism is still a matter of doubt. But hopefully they will display the maturity of seeing through the RJD’s cynical tactics and punish the party by conclusively voting it out — and even more decisively this time around. By doing so, they would only be punishing those whom they see as responsible for the governance mess that Bihar exemplifies today. As for the Bihar governor, it needs to be emphasised unequivocally that he has set a dangerous precedent which cannot do Indian democracy any good.
