Opinion In Bihar,a defeat for demagogues
If you have read this column more than once,you would know that I detest demagogues.
If you have read this column more than once,you would know that I detest demagogues. Not for personal or aesthetic reasons,but because in the thirty years that I have covered Indian politics,I have observed that the political culture demagoguery breeds is to blame for most of our economic and political problems. It has been my humble observation that whenever India was ruled by a supposedly charismatic leader,skilled in the arts of demagoguery,the country suffered while the leader continued to look good. This is because demagogues rarely bother to deliver on their grandiose promises to remove poverty and bring development since they are confident that their charisma is what brings in the votes and not their work. It is sadly true that they have far too often been proved right by voters.
So,when I saw demagoguery resoundingly trashed in the Bihar election,it lit a small flicker of hope in my cynical old heart. In Bihar,voters had a choice between an array of demagogues and a quiet,little man who allowed the work he had done in the past five years to speak for him. Well done Bihar for voting for Nitish Kumar instead of the demagogues and poseurs who came to defeat him with their charisma and their party tricks.
Nitish Kumars main rival was a very skilled demagogue called Lalu Yadav. So skilled that he has shown himself to be undefeatable despite charges that he made money out of fodder meant for Bihari cows and despite installing as chief minister his bovine wife,Rabri Devi,while he cooled his heels in a jail cell. Lalu ruled Bihar as if it were his personal fiefdom for fifteen long and useless years. The state went to pieces but Lalu thrived. After installing his wife in his place,he came to Delhi to become a celebrated cabinet minister despite doing as little for the railways as he did for Bihar. He got away with his lack of administrative abilities by being such a brilliant demagogue. His demagoguery even served to conceal the utter lack of any sort of ability that his wife showed as Chief Minister. While she tended her cows,children and kitchen in the Chief Ministers residence,law and order collapsed in Bihar and development stopped altogether. So much so that not even in the boom years that came from Dr Manmohan Singhs economic reforms in the early nineties did Bihar benefit one itsy-bitsy bit.
The voters of Bihar did well to throw out this squalid couple. They did even better to reject the advances of a baby demagogue by the name of Rahul Gandhi. Demagoguery has been the leitmotif of the political family that he comes from,so it is unsurprising that the Congress Partys Crown Prince campaigned with the confidence of a feudal lord come to collect his dues. He warned Bihars voters that they would be making a big mistake if they voted for Nitish Kumar because he was a useless chief minister who had squandered the largesse that we have been sending from Delhi.
Nitish Kumar chose not to respond to the charges flung at him and instead talked of how Bihar had improved in the past five years. How it was no longer reviled as a jungle raj,how roads and bridges had been built where there once were none,how women were safe enough to wander about village roads on bicycles and how much the economy had changed. At an annual economic growth of 11.35 per cent in the past five years (compared to 3.5 per cent before),there are visible differences in Bihar that were excellently reported by this newspapers editor in two articles last week.
From our weakness for demagogues have come the political dynasties that now control most political parties in India. Whenever this happens,a political party stops being a political party and becomes a family firm whose main purpose is to serve the interests of the family who controls it. From this comes the tendency to see politics as business and then inevitably we have one or other member of the family who is projected as a commercial genius who mysteriously makes a lot of money very quickly while his brother or sister goes into politics.
India has suffered enough from demagogues and dynasties. What we need are many,many more chief ministers like Nitish Kumar who show that they can win elections by working hard for the people who vote them to power. The voters of Bihar can truly be proud of the results they gave us last week. If this can happen in our poorest,most illiterate state,then there really is hope of India becoming a fully developed country in the next few years. But,voters must continue to tell the difference between demagogues and real leaders.
Follow Tavleen Singh on Twitter @ tavleen_singh<.i>
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