Laloo, pack-up time

In the hung assembly in Patna, walks a certainty. The Laloo Prasad-Rabri Devi regime has lost its right to rule. If democracy is about humbling power, then we have just watched that definition play itself out in a stirring way in Bihar. To be sure, the mandate is not univocal as it is in Haryana. Nor does it spell out the alternative as clearly as it articulates its rejection of the RJD. For Laloo, resourceful manipulator of political uncertainties, this lack of coherence may even present an opportunity. But it would be a travesty, indeed, if the erstwhile King of Bihar were to stake a claim to the throne he has been so rudely unsettled from.

The days to come are bound to be full of hectic lobbying and jostling and, yes, horse-trading. The relative weight of the claim of the single largest party as against that of the single largest pre-poll alliance, will be among the many points of fierce debate. The denizen of Patna’s Raj Bhavan will play a crucial role. But all those who have a stake in Bihar’s future must know that this verdict could be a turning point that must not be corrupted or lost. There is a chance today in Bihar of breaking the habits of paralysis that the state has settled into after the intense social churning in the 1990s. In 15 years of his rule, directly and by proxy, Laloo Prasad Yadav has led the state into a fine trap where the politicisation of previously marginalised communities has become an end in itself. Political representation itself has become such a hollowed-out thing in Bihar where the state has steadily receded and shrunk from even its basic obligations to the people. This terrible abdication by the state has been seized upon by a growing army of dons, the so-called bahubalis and dabangs, to carve out parallel areas of influence. The rise and rise of the clout of independents in Bihar’s electoral arena, and of those who routinely criss-cross political parties without a moral qualm, attests to the same phenomenon — of politics and institutions being drained of all their democratic content.

There is no ready recipe to revive Bihar. An alternative political agenda was mostly missing from an electoral campaign that played the game by Laloo’s rules — starting from the distribution of tickets. Consequently, as is evident from the uncertain divisions in the anti-Laloo vote, no single leader or party or formation could capture and consolidate the angry stirrings in the state. Yes, the forging of the alternative is going to be an arduous task for reasons far more substantive than inflexible egos. But the spirit of the mandate is clear, and hopeful: let there be a new government, a new beginning, in Bihar.