On Nitish tour,protests from crowds and criticism from ally

Following the protests from beyond the teaching fraternity,Nitish and other JD(U) leaders have blamed the RJD for hatching a conspiracy against him. Opposition leader Abdul Bari Siddiquei,on the other hand,has joked that Nitish had perhaps planned to “gauge the public mood to find out if JD-U can fight all 40 Lok Sabha seats on its own; the public rebuffed him”.

The protests have come against a chief minister who heads a 206-strong coalition in an assembly of 243 members. But even a leader from the JD(U)’s coalition partner,the BJP,has come up with statistics that highlight what seems to be a fall in the government’s popularity.

Uday Singh,the BJP’s Purnia MP,conducted a survey in his Lok Sabha constituency to evaluate how the people rate the government’s performance. He had the survey done by his “apolitical forum”,Lok Sabha Vikas Parishad.

Out of 2,03,722 households covered,39 per cent said electricity shortage was their biggest problem while 96 per cent were upset with the government for a liberal excise policy that allows retail liquor shops in villages,saying that liquor shops had been leading village youths astray and causing more cases of domestic violence.

The survey found that 60 per cent children aged between three and six had not been enrolled in aaganwadi schools and 50 per cent were not happy with the quality of food served under the mid-day meal scheme. Among other findings,50 per cent households rated primary health centres as “bad”; only 42 per cent had inoculation cards for children; 43 per cent found government doctors irregular; 75 per cent farmers had no KCC cards; only 5 per cent Mahadalits had benefited from a vocational training scheme.

Uday Singh started his own Vedna Pradarshan rally on Sunday,barely 50 km from Nitish Kumar’s stop in Kisanganj. “The idea is not to embarrass the coalition government but to draw its attention to things that have to be improved,” Singh said. “These are plain facts and must be taken up apolitically,with an open mind.”

Other BJP leaders have complained about the attitude of bureaucrats. Mines Minister Satyadeo Narayan Arya recently wrote to Nitish about his department’s secretary having bypassed him. MLA Anandi Prasad Yadav faced a case for “preventing a public servant from doing his duty” after he had taken up “people’s problems” with a circle officer. And Raniganj BJP MLA Parmanand Rishidev said: “The influence of MLAs has gone down after the scrapping of the MLALAD fund. Block development officers and circle officers don’t listen to us and it is difficult to monitor welfare schemes now.”

At the people’s level,the government has a high count for cases filed with Nitish’s janata durbars,but it has not specified how many of these cases have been disposed of,says RTI activist Shiv Prakash Rai. The RTI reply he received from the CM secretariat’s public information officer,Shahnawaz Khan,said the CM had received 1,15,161 complaints from 2006 till May 2011,but the activist’s query on disposals was not answered. “The swelling number of complaints is not an achievement,” he said.

District-wise,Patna topped with 18,076 complaints marked to the director general of police and 4,299 to the senior superintendent of police,while the CM’s home district Nalanda received 890,followed by Vaishali with 769 and Gaya with 516. The RTI activist alleged that there have been instances when a complainant has visited the janata durbar for over a dozen times for redressal of the same matter.

RJD president Lalu Prasad said,“It is time the Nitish government did some introspection rather than blame the Opposition for everything.”

The chief minister said,“We cannot help it if the Opposition is getting restive about coming back to power.”

He said the government had never claimed 100 per cent success with law and order,education or medical services. “As for electricity,I have made it clear that I will not seek votes if I fail to get adequate power by 2015,” said the chief minister.

His yatra culminates in a November 4 Adhikar rally to attack the Centre for its “stepmotherly attitude” in granting Bihar special category status.