What a long trek it has been from Madhepura to Danapur. When in October Laloo Prasad Yadav was comprehensively trounced at the hustings, epitaphs to his 10-year-long reign were already being penned. The break-up of his formidable social alliance and the unity forged by the National Democratic Alliance in the 1999 general elections were deemed to have marked the beginning of the end for this performer with a sola topi hairdo. Certainly, a return to Patna's 1 Anne Marg may still remain an impossibility for Laloo and his chief ministerial spouse, but the three-pronged combine of the BJP, the Samata Party and the Janata Dal (United) has only splattered with obstacles what should have been a cakewalk. And by default the Rashtriya Janata Party has been able to make something of a fight out of what would have been a hopeless campaign.Make no mistake. For all the self-defeating quibbling between the Samata Party and the JD(U), the BJP-led alliance still wields considerable advantage in the Bihar elections. Nomatter that its constituents are - at least for the moment locked in a ``friendly'' contest in practically half the 108 seats going to the polls in the first phase on February 12. No matter that inter-party compulsions have prevented them from confidently projecting one chief ministerial candidate. But it is an advantage that they will have to work extremely hard to consolidate, by fashioning the unity that paid such handsome dividends in the Lok Sabha elections. And the Samata Party's continued obstinacy over the number of seats it wants to contest will definitely not help matters.There are two ways to assess the Bihar electoral scene. One is in purely psephological terms. Clearly, it is a three-way fight - the two main players being the RJD and the NDA, with the Congress and the CPI-led alliance making it a triangular contest in their areas of influence. But if the internecine NDA battles continue, the result could be four-cornered contests and a fracturing of its proven upper-lower-castealliance.However, to view the forthcoming assembly elections merely in terms of vote share would be extremely unfair to the people of Bihar. A decade ago Laloo ascended power with promises of fomenting a total revolution. But instead of translating into reality Jayaprakash Narayan's dreams, he presided over a regime that witnessed increasing social tensions and non-delivery of the benefits of development. Instead of living up to his famous promise of providing Bihar with roads as smooth as Hema Malini's cheeks, he leaves a legacy of potholed roads and the odd electricity pole in an impoverished countryside.Instead of strides towards social justice, the nineties were punctuated with midnight massacres that only further fuelled centuries-old social cleavages. In its bid to secure power, it is this impasse that a responsible opposition must address, not petty quibbling over seat distribution. And given the daunting political space it occupied just months ago, that duty falls upon the NDA.
