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| June 19, 2000 | ||
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| Hell's
Angel What Bihar's Laloo thinks today, India may have to suffer tomorrow By Prem
Shankar Jha How did this sudden turnabout in fortunes happen? When the usual allegations of booth capturing are accounted for, one fact stands out. Misrule, corruption, fraud, betrayal of promises no longer matter to Bihar's people. This is captured in blazing prose by Sankarshan Thakur: "What do we say of Bihar? What do we say of a state itself so punched and blown it is not even supposed to feel pain? What do we say of a state so inured to wretchedness it refuses now to convey it or complain? ... Yeh Bihar hai. Yahan sub kuchh chalta hai." Thakur's book is a saga of despair. His story is not funny. In its sheer ordinariness it is terrifying. Laloo was born a gwala (cowherd) in a mud hut, the youngest of several brothers. An uncle who had obtained a government sinecure in Patna used this hard-won urban base to put Laloo through school, which he managed to pass with a third grade. This enabled him to go to a college renowned for its poor scholarship and its rich tradition of political activism. Here his intelligent baby face, his court jester's sense of humour and that he was a Yadav at a time when the elite caste consensus behind the Congress had broken down, enabled him to rise rapidly in student politics and beyond. The story of Laloo's rise underlines the extent to which democracy has displaced traditional modes of elite formation based on education, ability and leadership qualities and created a parallel avenue for the acquisition of power. This is the avenue typically availed of by people from rural areas, of limited means, who possess some exceptional leadership qualities. The political elite it creates knows how to mobilise voters and capture political power but has no idea of what to do with it. In the days following Independence, this gap was non-existent as the political leaders were educated and mostly from the elite castes (or truly exceptional members of the backward classes like B.R. Ambedkar). But with time this gap began to manifest itself. The democratic system worked so long as the leadership remained peppered with educated people capable of understanding, however dimly, the multiple challenges of nation building. Laloo's uniqueness lies in the fact that he has not only no inkling of these challenges but is supremely uninterested in finding out about them. It is not surprising that according to a Bihar State Intelligence Bureau report, suppressed in 1997 by governor A.R. Kidwai and prime minister I.K. Gujral, Laloo was the patron saint of a third of the 120 or so dacoit gangs active in the state. The Laloo phenomenon poses two threats to India. One, the fact (pitilessly exposed by Thakur) that he is only the first of a new breed of politicians that will inevitably take over much of the country -- Mayawati next door being a case in point. The second is that as other states progress and Bihar (and possibly Uttar Pradesh and Orissa) sink into a black hole, India will break up. The exodus of the jobless, desperate poor to other states will continue till the latter, in self-defence, reserve all jobs for mulkis (viz. Andhra!). The immigration of job seekers will become clandestine. It will then only be a matter of time before parties like the Shiv Sena come up in every state. NEW RELEASES The Penguin India Faultlines V Kashmir As It Was Laws Relating to Computers,
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 © Living Media India Ltd |
When
the results of the Bihar assembly elections began to come in in March this
year, analysts watched with disbelief as the Rashtriya Janata Dal (RJD) of
Laloo Yadav came from behind in the final hours of counting to overtake
its rival, the BJP-Samata-Janata Dal (U) combination.