PICTURE SPEAK

Some of our covers on Lalu

In 1989, I accompanied Lalu Prasad Yadav on his campaign trail. I was struck by his ability to work the crowd using earthy language and a wicked sense of humour. Here was a born politician who was able to strike a rapport with the masses and an out-of-the-ordinary communicator. From then to now, for over 15 years, while his home state Bihar has regressed on all counts of economics and development, Lalu's power and presence have grown in national politics. He has defied the dictum that governance matters and flouted all political logic by making wife Rabri Devi chief minister and running Bihar by proxy.

The state has become the byword for backwardness where crime and lawlessness are rampant, and there seems little hope for any kind of order. Its ironies and those of its rulers are lost on no one and the one about not having bread but eating cakes has come to life here during the campaign for the assembly elections: there are no motorable roads to speak of, so politicians travel in helicopters. In another unsavoury twist to electioneering and politicking, the kidnapping of children is being leveraged as poll tactics. The protest of students is treated with disdain and inaction.

It takes a particularly entrenched cynicism to turn children into electoral fodder but politicians have managed to do so in Bihar. It may seem a new twist to an old tale but trouble brews for Lalu. For the first time in many elections, his kingdom, while not overrun, is under threat. His catchment constituency, the Muslim voter, is divided in his loyalty. His main rival Ram Vilas Paswan is gaining in strength. Should push come to shove, Paswan also has the tacit support of the Congress.

Lalu watchers now await his next move, to see whether the old fox still has both wiliness and fight left in him. Or whether the clock has run out on his charmed existence. We sent Deputy Editor S. Prasannarajan to Patna to meet India's consummate grassroots politician and understand his mystique and unravel his myth. Prasannarajan hitched a ride on the ministerial helicopter and saw Lalu at work. He says, "He of cultivated rusticity is the last performer in the kitsch of social justice. In the countryside, he plays with the mass mind and turns salvation into a bucolic spectacle."

It is hard to escape the feeling that the state of Bihar is not plagued by its poverty but by its politicians.

(Aroon Purie)

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