The feet that traversed the longest distance in the depravity of social justice are being warmed by the dying embers in a makeshift fireplace. Bare and small, and flanked by a temporarily abandoned pair of rubber slip-ons and a de-coloured spittoon, they will soon be further soothed by the deep exhale of seekers' submission. The man himself, like a downsized pagan God in minimalist costume, surveys his universe, which on this wintry morning is wallpapered in green. His gaze is welcomed by his own image, painted to oval perfection, larger than the woman with parted hair, his partner in life and his proxy in power, and her bindi as red as ever. On his right are courtiers and official panegyrists, seated in horizontal harmony, waiting for their turn to be heard and healed, and beyond them is the potato field waiting for the hesitant sun; and elsewhere in the backyard, fat cows in woollen overcoats chew in lassitude. He nods, raises the arm, and welcomes you to the durbar, "Brother..."

PICTURE SPEAK

CLOSE BRUSH: Lalu plays out his cultivated rusticity with aplomb

Lalu Prasad Yadav, leader of the Rashtriya Janata Dal, Union minister of railways and, more functionally, the husband of the chief minister of Bihar, beckons from a cottage next to the chief minister's bungalow at 1 Anne Marg, the leafy privilege of Patna. Bihar's last monarch is warming up to defend his kingdom in tatters, for pretenders to the throne are at the gate. The first lady, Rabri Devi, is away, remembering Gandhi on his day of martyrdom. A son loiters around; a brother-in-law in flaming red sweater walks in and out with quiet authority. Suddenly, the crown comedian of social justice is reminded of the redundancy of the joke. He begins to see bogeymen. He sees them in newsprint, on the television screen and in the foggy battlefield, challenging his infallibility, questioning his family values, threatening his sociology. He has to be alert; he cannot afford to sleep; the enemy is lurking in the shadowy corners, where the schoolchild or the secularist is not safe. His kingdom is in the danger of being kidnapped: "I'm alert. And I'm asking people to be alert. Fascists and communalists can't be allowed to take over." He touches the golden locket that hangs from a red chain on his neck. It carries the blessings of a Jain sadhu. He needs all the blessings in this election. What is at stake is more than the fortunes of India's most entertaining dynasty where "kitchen cabinet" is not figurative but literal. It is the mystique-and the monotony-of being Lalu Prasad Yadav.

Bihar too needs the blessings and Lalu thinks only he can provide them, he being the reigning patriarch of a state let down by social engineers as well as sociopaths in political camouflage. It is the poster state of India Undone, an India of photogenic poverty and sub-rural casteism, of raw violence and the banality of corruption, inhabited by, as the morning newspaper tells you, kidnappers and killers, extortionists and voodoo netas. It is Bihar as a way of life exaggerated by urban clichés; it is governance as social pornography; and it keeps alive a cottage industry of Biharology, a viable academic opportunity for sociologists who thrive in Bihar deconstructed. Is this the man, now dressing up in public for the day's battle, who is the most indulged synonym for the pathology of power? Is he the last performer in the vaudeville of social justice? Or is he just smarter than the rest, the jesting manipulator of the mass mind? The one who can take Bihar for granted but can't be taken for granted by the challengers, all erstwhile pals from the school of JP? Lalu is larger than the sum total of the stereotypes.

PICTURE SPEAK SEEKING BIHAR: (From left) Sonia Gandhi; Advani with George Fernandez

For a change, Lalu plays victim-and refuses to be a leader who is withering away: "Look brother, my opponents have no agenda and they are desperately creating one. Vajpayee comes here and asks, 'where is my Kislay (the kidnapped DPS boy who was dramatically released on the eve of the first phase of the poll)? Did he go to Gujarat and ask 'where is my beti?' when the foetus was ripped out of the womb with trishuls? It won't work. Even anti-incumbency won't work here. This is the golden period of Bihar." The other long dead Bihari, Chandragupta Maurya, could not have been complemented by better irony. Then Lalu talks Greek: "Connectivity-yes, that is what Bihar needs and that is what this Government is providing. Roads. Power. Water. That's my agenda and the agenda of this Government." And that is scripted on the green campaign poster: "Vikasit Bihar ke nirman tatha sauhardya ke liye hamare ummeedvar ko vote do (Vote our candidate for the development and harmony of Bihar)." The politics of crime is elsewhere, beyond Anne Marg, and criminals are incompatible with the throne of Pataliputra-at least, that is what he is struggling to convince every Bihari and every visitor with the notepad in search of the proverbial badland motifs. "All the criminals are with Ram Vilas Paswan," he says. Lok Janshakti Party (LJP) leader Paswan portrays himself as the inevitable alternative in Bihar 2005. Lalu wants "five more years for Rabri Devi", for "after 20 years if you want us to go", he tells the people, "we will go".

PICTURE SPEAK

GIVE ME FIVE MORE YEARS: Rabri (left) plays common mother

Now, though, he is going to the shirtless multitude of the hinterland, waiting for him airmiles away, no matter what the weather is. One thousand feet above the ground, inside the Bell 407 chopper, he is at peace with himself. There is poor visibility and the pilot is concerned: "Shall we return to Patna, sir?" Lalu looks sideways and waves off fear-and opens the steel box for another paan. Nothing can stop him and the sun obliges. "Look ..." You look down with him as the helicopter descends. The sight below pleases him. They are on tree tops and on the water tanks, on cracked walls and on rooftops. The flying saucer has come to the village, and in star value the main passenger has to compete with this winged machine. It is all strategically planned: the helipad and the green stage exist in perfect harmony, the honours divided. Five more years, he asks them. Then he tells them fairytales: of harmless lathis soaked in oil, of the unborn child gored by trishuls, of the "poojari" who was killed and the acharya who was arrested, of the adventures of the Bihar regiment in Kargil .... The storyteller is their "sepoy and bhai".

TWISTS AND TURNS

BJP-JD(U) If NDA partners manage to get around 80 of the 243 seats, Nitish Kumar may be projected as the next chief minister. Nitish, in turn, could enlist Paswan's support by offering him the chief ministership only to bring the 15-year rule of the Lalu family to an end. That would of course mean pulling Paswan out of the UPA, of which he is a minister at the Centre. If the NDA fails to pick up the numbers needed to topple Lalu, it will be a long while before the alliance gets another chance for recovery. LJP It is the first time Paswan's party is fighting elections independent of an official alliance partner, though he has selectively entered into pacts with the Congress in several constituencies. To a large extent, success for him depends on how much he can cut into Lalu's Muslim vote bank. After elections, he may face pressure from the Congress to form a coalition with the RJD on condition that either he or a Congress nominee becomes the chief minister. The alternative will be to tie up with JD(U). CONGRESS The party is harping on a secular government that includes the RJD, LJP and the left parties. Ideally it would prefer a set-up similar to that in Maharashtra with a Congress or an LJP chief minister, especially if these two parties together get over 50 seats. Left would also pressure Lalu to agree to such a set-up. RJD Lalu says the election is all about renewing Rabri Devi's licence to rule. But if the RJD falls short of majority, Lalu would be dependent on the Congress and Left, which may demand a change in leadership. In that case, the RJD chief will not have many options. For Nitish, the unofficial chief ministerial candidate of the NDA, Lalu's defeat is a prerequisite for Bihar's salvation.

At one place, as another rally a few yards away waits for another performer, Hema Malini herself, he tells them about his own film career, about Padma Shree Laloo Yadav. He educates them about the funny voting machine that makes the sound "peeee ...". And he kidnaps the children to their delight. In the village of Jhajha, he calls them to come forward and take the first row: chhutke chhutke aajao .... Though most of them are not all that happy to lose the chopper for the sake of the leader. In the nowhere remoteness of Chakai and Bausi, Bauka and Behlar, what is at work is connectivity of a different kind-the cultural one. As he takes off for the next destination, he warns fellow passengers, "Don't wave so much. They may mistakenly vote for the Congress." Kitsch, the aesthetic ideal of the engineers of the mass mind, plays with emotion and Lalu of cultivated rusticity has already turned the politics of social justice into a bucolic thriller of the deprived. This is connectivity, courtesy the circus of hope. Here Lalu is an overwhelming intimacy in the countryside, where salvation is a spectacle that visits every five years.

Five years no more, that is what his "alternative" tells you and the same people who were mesmerised by Lalu the previous day. "Oh, he says all the criminals are with me. He is their leader. People have already accepted Ram Vilas Paswan as chief minister," says Paswan, whose LJP, with the Congress as partner, is promising a brand new Bihar where every caste will be happy, where telephone will ring in every poor home, where the Muslims will have their own university, where the underprivileged girl child will be insured by the state and where the Internet will be at every Bihari's service. And where Lalu will be a bad memory. "Important Yadavs are lining up outside my door. Lalu talks about the minorities but what has he done for them-for the Muslims, for the Yadav masses? He demonises me, then he's my advertising agent."

Paswan fancies himself as the agent of change. In a display of competitive helicopterism, the most functioning ideology in Bihar at this moment, he insists that you should experience first hand how he outdoes his adversary. Another Bell 407, and more of the same, except that Paswan wants to talk development-and he wants to be the unifier of all castes; most tellingly he wants to be the friend and benefactor of Muslims. One Muslim on the ground even wants to make this election a contest between "Ladenji and Laluji". Maulana Meraj Khalid Noor, a visual parody of Osama bin Laden, whom Paswan worships as the "Mahatma", is a communal accessory-and a sought after curiosity for the media. This Ladenji has only cell phones, no Kalashnikov, and he plays his part to the demand of every journalist and is capable of some passable soundbites too: "Paswanji, like Ladenji, is pitted against the big leader." There is no misplaced joke in Bihar and this one is pretty dark, as dark as Paswan's hair and beard. The BJP's Arun Jaitley sees in this minority-mania "the Talibanisation" of Muslim politics. Then the BJP has its own token Muslim in the Bihar campaign: Shahnawaz Hussain. "Paswan does not have any established Muslim leader with him," says the "established" Hussain.

PICTURE SPEAK COUNTERPOINTS: Paswan with Bin Laden lookalike campaigner

PICTURE SPEAK ENOUGH OF HIM: Nitish wants an end to Lalu's terror raj

And it is the Muslim-Yadav combination that has made Lalu the most established politician in Bihar. Its arbiter for 15 long years. Today he feels he is being tortured by the media. He calls you late at night to tell you about unequal justice: "You know what the media is doing to me." You have done something cruel, sure. And he has already been informed that you have been with Paswan. Beware of the political surveillance system at the airport. Someone else says it is Lalu who has been cruel to Bihar, the state that has made him, and the state that will eventually undo him. Nitish Kumar, once a fellow socialist, the unofficial chief ministerial candidate of the BJP-JD(U) alliance, tells you why Lalu's defeat is a prerequisite for Bihar's liberation. "Lohia said it long before: the idea of social justice will be defeated by the empowered backwards," he says. In Bihar today, the triad of Lalu, Paswan and Nitish brings out the faded socialists' struggle for a permanent homeland. The first two are competing for the Muslim vote. Nitish, the gentleman among the old socialists, wants to be acceptable to the upper caste too. His ally, the BJP, has taken refuge in arithmetic. Jaitley, currently on assignment Bihar, shuffles numbers and creates the possibility of the BJP alliance emerging as the single largest group in Bihar: "We want to consolidate the NDA vote. We are doing everything together. Even the slogan is common."

Well, in Patna, a city in tatters, what is common is more than the slogan. Paswan's party has taken an entire floor of a private hotel; In the ITDC-owned Patliputra, the BJP has eight rooms and two suites; the RJD, of course, doesn't have much use for hotels. In terms of off-field activity, it is the hotel lobbies and corridors in the evening; it is the Patna airport in the morning. The RJD has five choppers (Lalu attends an average of eight rallies a day and Rabri five or six); the BJP has four plus an eight-seater aircraft for its visiting leaders; the LJP has three; the JD(U) two; and the sp one. Wish the less privileged had some flying object to travel within Patna itself.

And when Lalu looks down from his chopper, the ecstasy below, whirling in dust, gives him an extra sense of immortality. For so long, he has outplayed the counter-theology of liberation. The child of JP's total revolution may have followed history's every other revolutionary's trajectory: the romance of rebellion slowly fading out in the make-believe of absolute power. He can't afford the magic ending up as a con. The badland mythology of Lalu Prasad Yadav can't be Bihar's longest horror story. And social justice can't forever be removed from social realism. So raise the lantern, the green lantern of the Rashtriya Janata Dal-that is the desperation of Lalu 2005. Remember, there was a magic lantern that was a defining motif in history: the velvet revolution of 1989. There is nothing velvety about Bihar today, the exception being the stump speech. For liberation is everybody's slogan. In the duskland of Bihar, one man still hopes to shine for another five years in the glow of the green lantern.

-with Farzand Ahmed

Index