Laloo vs Yadav

Many Laloo loyalists lost. Mansa Devi — sister-in-law of Rabri Devi, Laloo’s wife and successor as chief minister — was the official candidate for the Patna mayor’s post. She lost to rebel Krishna Murari Yadav.

In the Patna zila parishad, Sanjay Kumar Yadav, Krishna Murari’s son-in-law, became chairman. Today Laloo is getting back, asking the police to investigate Sanjay’s ‘‘illegal brick kilns’’.

These are not stray cases. Political circles in Patna are abuzz with stories of Yadav wannabes who have milked Laloo’s patronage sufficiently enough to challenge him. It’s early days yet but having sown success, Laloo is reaping thorns.

When he became chief minister in 1990, Laloo promised to make Bihar the premier laboratory of social justice. The domination of the upper castes would end.

Over a dozen years, Laloo has moved from the Janata Dal to the Rashtriya Janata Dal (RJD) and from chief minister to chief minister’s husband. Social justice has stopped moving though, refusing to trickle down below the middle castes. The biggest of the middle castes? Yadavs, of course.

Bihar’s demography suggest a three-way break-up:

l the upper castes (Brahmins, Rajputs and Bhumihars) make up just under 12 per cent of population.

l Next come the middle or intermediate castes, 36 per cent. They can be divided into the Backward Castes (BCs) such as the Yadavs (11 per cent) and the Extremely Backward Castes (EBCs).

l Finally there are the Dalits (15 per cent) and the Scheduled Tribes (one per cent).

A decade of Mandalism has only empowered the BCs. ‘‘Exploitative caste relations,’’ says Patna-based sociologist Hetukar Jha, ‘‘have not changed. The only change is middle caste elites too have become masters.’’

Academic jargon, you’d say. What does it mean? Well, when Laloo raj began, the Yadav stereotype was of poor, rustic folk. Today rural Bihar’s middle-caste masters are escorted by henchmen, drive swanky cars, carry guns, control the local police stations. They cut deals with the very upper caste chieftains they swore to overthrow.

Appropriation? A sort of sanskritisation? Call it what you will. Illicit liquor to land scandals, sand mining to manipulating government contracts and transfers — the hand behind it is invariably a Yadav one.

Who’s suffering? The EBCs and the hapless Dalits, who’ve happily voted for Laloo election and after election in the hope he would save them.

‘‘Yadavs and Kurmis humiliate and discriminate against the Methors, Mussahars, Dom and Nat,’’ says Asharfi Sada, convenor of the Dalit Adhikar Morcha (DAM), ‘‘these Dalit groups have no political clout.’’

DAM recently conducted a 52-village survey that recorded instances of BCs preventing Dalits from voting during elections. For these Dalit groups, representation in government jobs is virtually zero, the literacy rate, found Dam, was no more than two per cent in the state.

Other statistics are equally stark. In the Lok Sabha and state assembly, seats are reserved for Dalits. In the Rajya Sabha and state legislative council, they are not.

Of the RJD’s Rajya Sabha members only one, Anil Singh, is a Dalit. In the Bihar legislative council, only two members are Dalit.

When the tribal region of Jharkhand was hived off into a separate state, Bihar had to do something with the 10 per cent educational and government job quota it had for STs. Two per cent of this was given to Dalits, a whopping six per cent kept for the middle castes.

The key to Laloo’s political survival has been rewarding Yadavs without letting any one of them emerge as a challenger. His (rather, his wife’s) top ministers are Brahmin or Rajput. Now the lesser Yadavs are getting restive. Social justice has finally gone mad.