Staying alive in Bihar

Be it Bathe, Bathani Tola or any other village in the killing fields of Bihar, two questions are uppermost in the minds of the people. Where and when will the next blood bath take place?

And, more important, how will the people of Bihar, especially the state8217;s landless Dalits respond to the continued onslaught on their lives and honour in the coming battle of the ballot?

As for the first question, the answer was in a report by the Bihar unit of the People8217;s Union of Civil Liberties PUCL long back in 1992 after the infamous Bara massacre in which an extremist Naxa-group had mowed down 34 upper-caste landowners in Gaya in retaliation to the killing of 15 of their sympathisers in Tiskhora Patna a year earlier.

It said: 8220;If someone is alive in Bihar, it is because no one is interested in killing him!8221;

The second question, however, keeps all the major political outfits preparing for the polls on tenterhooks. Specially when Bihar satrap Laloo Prasad Yadav8217;s backward-Dalit-Muslim grand alliance is showing signs of weakening. A major shift in the Dalit votes could upset the apple-cart of Laloo8217;s Rashtriya Janata Dal RJD, now that some of his erstwhile allies, Koeries and Kurmis, have walked over to the uppercaste bandwagon commandeered by the BJP. Even his friends in the 1996 Lok Sabha elections like Ram Vilas Pawan and the Communists have deserted him.

Bihar8217;s jailed ex-chief minister had read signs of Dalit alienation long ago and started mending fences with his upper-caste foes.

8220;Bihar is facing a potential class struggle between the rural poor and the urban rich8230; I am acting as the buffer, holding the state together,8221; Laloo had warned the state8217;s wannabe affluent sections after the Bathani Tola massacre in 1996.

Laloo8217;s detractors allege that a section of his RJD is backing the upper caste landlords8217; Ranveer Sena, which perpetrated the massacres in Bathani Tola last year and in Haibaspur and Bathe villages this year.

8220;The Laloo regime8217;s inability to effectively enforce the ban on Ranveer Sena was not a case of system failure,8221; says a Patna academic. 8220;It was conditioned by considerations of realpolitik.8221;

Initially he considered Ranveer Sena, formed in 1994 by the Rajputs and Bhumihars with alleged support from the BJP and the Congress leaders of Central Bihar, as a counter-weight to naxalite outfits.

And when the land wars in Bihar polarised the upper and lower castes further, bringing even the affluent Yadavs on the hit list of the extremist outfits, he slowly started changing tack.

The first major indication of this subtle shift was when Jwala Singh, a dreaded Rajput landlord of Bhojpur and manager of the Dinwar-Bihta carnage of 1984, joined the Janata Dal on the eve of the 1996 Lok Sabha elections. It was openly acknowledged by one of Laloo8217;s main field commanders and RJD Union Minister Chandradev Prasad Verma when he demanded that the ban on the Ranveer Sena should be lifted. When JD MP S.M. Shahabuddin allegedly got CPI-ML activist Chandreshekhar killed Sewan and the State Government merely looked on, this fact was established beyond doubt.

That a section of Bihar8217;s landless Dalits were getting disenchanted with their Laloo Bhaiya has started becoming clear in the electoral battles after Laloo8217;s impressive sweep in 1995 assembly polls.

In 1991, Laloo8217;s JD had bagged 32 seats in Bihar on its own. With his allies, CPI 8, CPM 1, JMM 6 and one independent, Laloo then controlled 48 of Bihar8217;s 54 Lok Sabha seats. This dominance was confirmed in 1995 assembly elections when the JD bagged 165 seats and with his allies in the Left controlled 196 of the State Assembly8217;s 324 seats.

Laloo was thus all set for his Dilli Chalo8217; campaign on the eve of 1996 Lok Sabha elections. But when the results came, he found that his voters had tricked him. The JD8217;s tally in the Lok Sabha dropped from 32 to 22, the CPI8217;s came down from eight to four and the CPM lost its lone seat. The JMM, which had broken the NF by that time, also suffered and could win only one seat in the new Lok Sabha 8212; it had six in the last one. More ominous, the vote-share of Laloo and his allies in the 1996 elections had come down to 36 per cent. The BJP-Samata combine, with a vote-share of 35 per cent, was perilously close. That this exceeded the proportion of upper-castes and middle-urban castes like Kurmis and Koeries in the State population was an unmistakable indication that some of Laloo8217;s Dalit supporters were slipping away.

The 10 assembly by-elections held in October 1996 indicated that Laloo8217;s onward slide was continuing. The JD had held all the 10 seats but lost four of them to the BJP-Samata combine in the by-elections.

In Ziradei, Shahabuddin8217;s home constituency, the JD could scrape through by a narrow margin by less than 2,500 votes and in Warisnagar SC by less than 2,000 votes.

The JD losses are more revealing. The Paliganj assembly constituency in the naxalite-infected Central Bihar 8212; Lakshmanpur Bathe is not far away from this place 8212; JD8217;s vote dipped from 47,500 in 1995 to 27,000, resulting in the BJP8217;s victory.

The Piro assembly constituency, which forms part of Union Minister Kanti Singh8217;s Lok Sabha constituency, the JD8217;s vote came down by 10,000 and the Samata won.

More alarming for Laloo, it was Mulayam8217;s Samajwadi Party which cost him three of the four seats. Now that his JD stands further fragmented after the departure of the likes of Ram Vilas Paswan, the parties comprising Paswan-Mulayam-Left and CPI-ML could cause more damage to the electoral prospects of his RJD.

It is primarily to compensate for this inevitable damage that Laloo has made friends with the JMM and is now turning to an upper-caste party like the Congress for comfort.

Whether a disheartened Congress and a fractured JMM can keep his party afloat in the bloody waters of Bihar politics will be decided by the State8217;s 24 per cent Dalit electorate soon.