Day with Kanhaiya Kumar on his Bihar Yatra: Focus on migration, jobs; gets mixed response

As The Indian Express joins him on Day 5 of his yatra Thursday, Kanhaiya, dressed in a simple white T-shirt, is in North Bihar’s Sitamarhi. The day begins with the hoisting of the national flag by former Riga MLA Amit Kumar Tunna.

Kanhaiya marches on with 500-odd party workers carrying Congress flags. Three party workers atop horses are part of the contingent too. As he proceeds, a man gives him a coin with Indira Gandhi’s face embossed on it. Kanhaiya thanks him.

At 10.30 am, Kanhaiya and others stop for tea. A song on the speaker goes: “Janmabhoomi ko karmbhoomi me badalna hai. Bihar, bahut suna hai ab badalni hai sarkar (We have to convert Bihar from our place of birth to place of work. We have heard enough, we have to change the government)”. A crowd gathers, and Kanhaiya outlines his yatra’s objective: migration and jobs.

“Migration cuts across caste, religion and gender. Before Holi or Eid, one can see heavy rush at the Delhi and Mumbai railway stations with people heading for Bihar… Migration for jobs is a core issue that affects everyone. The issue should be on everyone’s lips as we fight the elections later this year,” he says.

Kanhaiya then speaks of corruption. “There is a commission in everything. It is a transactional reality and we need to do something out of the box. We need a higher level of public awareness. The Congress is the biggest platform for raising public concern and we will have to use it to raise issues of education, employment and migration,” he says.

An hour later, Kanhaiya gets into a car to visit Janki Dham — considered the birthplace of Goddess Sita — at Sitamarhi town.

While Kanhaiya is still inside the temple, Birchand Paswan, a local resident and hardcore supporter of the Janata Dal (United) and BJP government, says “there is no future of Congress”. “Congress ka kuchh nahi ho sakta (nothing can happen of the Congress), he says.

Paswan is speaking of a larger trend in Bihar. Since the Congress lost Bihar in 1990, the party has been on a downhill journey in the state. In the 2000 Assembly polls, the party’s vote share dipped to 11.06%. Five years later, it plunged to 6.1% votes and nine seats.

In the 2010 polls, when Bihar Chief Minister Nitish Kumar’s popularity was at its peak, the Congress managed 8.4% votes but could win only four seats — its lowest tally in Bihar till that point.

In the following polls, in 2015, the Congress’s fortunes revived slightly as part of alliance with the Rashtriya Janata Dal (RJD). The party got 6.8% votes, but won 27 seats. In the 2020 polls, the Congress got 9.6% votes and bagged 19 seats.

After the temple visit, Kanhaiya visits a party worker’s house where he holds a press conference. Here, he talks about the glory of the ancient university of Nalanda and Dasrath Manjhi who had used a hammer and a chisel to cut through a hillock for 22 years in order to shorten the route between two blocks in Gaya.

“How did Bihari become an abusive term?” asks Kanhaiya.

“This is not merely an electoral yatra. It takes up bigger questions such as the Bihar Public Service Commission (BPSC)’s paper leaks… 1.5 lakh people were chosen for jobs but they are still not getting their appointment letters. We are talking about migration and that issue can settle debates on divergent ideologies,” says Kanhaiya.

After lunch, he engages in discussions with party leaders about the future course of the yatra. The group talks about making crony capitalism an issue going forward and debates whether Jan Suraaj founder Prashant Kishor could be a factor in the elections. Despite reports of animosity with ally RJD, Kanhaiya says he is open to the idea of sharing the stage with the party’s Tejashwi Yadav.

When the yatra resumes, Indian Youth Congress national president Uday Bhanu Chib and wrestler-turned-politician Bajrang Punia join Kanhaiya.

Says Chib: “I have worked in Bihar for a long time. About 2.9 crore people of Bihar have been living outside the state. In the last 20 years, the Bihar government has hardly created any jobs. We have been raising the right questions”.

Punia agrees and proceeds to question the work done by the JD(U)-BJP government in Bihar.

At 5 pm, Kanhaiya halts for his final tea break. After that, he heads for a nukkad sabha where he talks about the migration issue, pending vacancies in government jobs, and the status of sugar mills in the region.

Kanhaiya says he is charged up and will continue on this journey – and is confident that it will pay off.

But the locals have mixed views over his yatra. Bhagya Narayan Yadav, a Riga resident, says people have forgotten about the Congress. “It should be on the ground round the year, not just in election year,” he says.