PICTURE SPEAK

POLLS APART: Lalu

It was Independence Day in Pataliputra, the day Lalu Prasad Yadav fell from the make-believe of infallibility, with no green lantern to lighten the way out of the void. In the end, there was only the solace of the steel spittoon. As a funereal gloom enveloped 1 Dr Madhav Shriharianne Marg, abbreviated to Anne Marg as a synonym for the pathology of power, the loneliness of the fallen was further accentuated by the heavily guarded door, outside which there were no orphaned subjects in mourning. There were only fatigued reporters waiting for a last glimpse of Leader Outcast. He, for so long the camera-friendly certainty of Bihar, has become an absence, a protected item in the ruins of defeat. When the gates opened a few minutes before two in the afternoon, death-watchers with their notepads and cameras swarmed the lawn, whose monotony was broken by a circle of plastic chairs. Then he emerged in the far end, an apparition in white, floating towards the frenzied media crowd. Wife and the outgoing notional chief minister, Rabri Devi, was not there on his side; she was elsewhere, most likely back in her natural abode, the kitchen. The gait was not that of dead man walking; rather it was as if the phantom king was having his last walk in the lawn. He was there to concede political mortality, to declare the end of his own mythology, manufactured over 15 years that had turned Bihar into a proverb of political depravity.

PICTURE SPEAK

Nitish: with Bihar BJP President Modi

On Tuesday, when Lalu Prasad Yadav undid himself, it was more than the end of folk heroism in the most abused politics of social justice. The size of his defeat-just 65 seats for his Rashtriya Janata Dal-led alliance against the 147 of NDA-is matched by the magnitude of popular revulsion. The first cracks in the myth appeared eight months ago, but Lalu refused to accept defeat. If not me, then no one-he yielded to the familiar totalitarian temptation, and his next door neighbour, the obliging governor, was there to fulfil his wish. In retrospect, that was his political death wish. His staying power-despite scams and scandals-may have made him an inevitability in Bihar, but the man who had turned governance into a sub-rural vaudeville wanted to be an eternity.

PROFILE

The New Nitish A complete anti-thesis of Lalu Yadav, the sober Nitish Kumar has managed to change the focus from caste to development in Bihar Exactly 10 years ago, Nitish Kumar, then 44, walked out of the Janata Dal headed by Lalu Prasad Yadav, who was once his closest friend, with a vow to rid Bihar of the "Jungle Raj". Lalu laughed off the challenge in characteristic fashion, saying, "I am like an old peepal tree that can never be uprooted". It has taken 10 years, but last week it was Nitish who had the last laugh when he was sworn in as the state's 31st chief minister at the historic Gandhi Maidan from where he started his political journey three decades ago sharing the dais with, among others, Jayaprakash Narayan and Lalu during the Bihar Movement for "Total Revolution". It was not the kind of career that Kaviraj Ram Lakhan Singh, a village vaid of Kaliyabagh in central Bihar's Nalanda district and his wife Parmeshwari Devi had envisaged for their younger son. Nitish was an intelligent, ambitious and sometimes stubborn child. Family members say he was sucked into the JP-led student movement while pursuing engineering studies at the Bihar College of Engineering. There has been no looking back since then. Nitish was jailed during the Emergency and in 1977, joined the Janata Party and later the Janata Dal. Nitish debuted in electoral politics in 1985 and was elected to the state assembly; four years later he was elected to the Lok Sabha. Though Lalu and Nitish started their politicial careers together, a parting of ways was inevitable. Lalu was a rustic for whom politics meant playing to the galleries; Nitish was a sober, aloof leader for whom politics was serious business. As Bihar slipped deeper and deeper into anarchy and chaos under Lalu, Nitish raised the banner of revolt and floated the Samata Party along with former chief minister Abdul Ghafoor and George Fernandes. But it was not until 1999 that Lalu faced a credible threat. In the Lok Sabha elections, the rjd lost most of the seats and Lalu himself lost to arch rival Sharad Yadav in Madhepura. But it was as a minister at the Centre in the year 2002 that Nitish emerged as a symbol of Bihar's new hope. As the Union railway minister, he gave concrete shape to the East-Central Railway Zone, first conceived by his predecessor Ramvilas Paswan, which was shifted to Bihar from West Bengal. As Bengal's claim was ignored, Trinamool's Mamata Banerjee raved and ranted and even threatened to quit the Vajpayee government in which she was a minister. But Bihar's political class, cutting across party lines rallied around Nitish who followed up his railway bonanza for Bihar with other similar goodies. As union surface transport minister, he got 1,065 km of roads in Bihar included in the national highway network; as agriculture minister, he set up an office of the Indian Council for Agricultural Research and three research centres in Patna. In Bihar, where development is a forgotten word, he became known as the "Vikas Purush". "Bihar will develop only if we stop talking politics too much. We have to change the agenda from politics to economics," he said at the time. The unrelenting campaign for development and governance which led to another kind of change was followed up with the task of turning the state's wretched caste-based politics into development-oriented politics. Nitish rose above his caste and asked people to look beyond caste and social barriers to vote in favour of the NDA. But for this man of the moment, the task ahead is tough. In a state which has not seen any development, has no roads or light, where people live in fear, where lawlessness has been the rule and which has been ruled by rogue politicians and an indifferent bureaucracy in the past 15 years of social justice, his promises have created a hope that might turn out to be dangerous if it remains unfulfilled. - By Farzand Ahmed

On the night before that fantasy was swept aside, he was counting imaginary seats, and the final tally went up to 165. Rabri, wrapped in a gray shawl, approved the optimism with a nod. "Last time we could not make it because of over confidence and division in the Muslim Yadav," he said in a sudden display of faux-modesty, and then, angered by the projections in the "feudal media", ridiculed psephology with weird numerology.

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HATS OFF: A triumphant Nitish Kumar with Muslim supporters

"Fifteen years of stability and war against communal and feudal forces. That is the great achievement of Lalu Prasad Yadav and Rabri Devi," and he was not prepared for the shock of the next day. He was not prepared for Nitish Kumar, Bihar's reborn conquistador.

When Force Nitish Kumar hit him, there was no help from sociology or ideology. The Muslim-Yadav combination that formed the social base of Laludom did not work to his advantage. This election shattered the caste matrix that defined power and privilege in Bihar for the past 15 years. Lalu, the cowherd from Phulwaria who would later make cattle fodder a synonym for corruption, lost the mandate of the poor and the poorest, once his unchallenged constituency. The jesting messiah of socialist salvation, the secularist sustained by the worst instincts of caste politics, had nothing to fall back on as he faced the challenger, whose face was familiar, and who was waiting for this moment, and who was close to realising his dream in last February. Both Lohiaites, they were once apprentice revolutionaries under Jayaprakash Narayan, and when they met for the final showdown, Lalu was too late to know that there would be space for only one revolutionary in the famished land of Bihar. The NDA, with Nitish as the alternative to Lalu, mobilised the most backward and the upper caste, the most disillusioned and the victimised under the RJD rule, as a winning force. Still, the changed caste permutation was not the only factor that made Nitish the super-slayer. The man, an engineer by qualification, had a message, an idea that differed from Lalu's discredited social engineering.

It was as matter-of-fact as the man himself, an exception in a place where exaggerated gestures are the norm in politics. On the day judgment was delivered, Nitish was not at the JD(U) office on Birchand Patel Marg in Patna, where victory celebrations-a political holi-were incomplete with the triumphant leader away in Delhi. When he returned the next afternoon, the unshaven hero of change made no grand proclamations, there were only words about business to be done and how to go about it. The writing was there on the wall of the party office itself: Janata Dal U ka yahi prayas, gaav-garib tak pahunche vikas (the Janata Dal (U) is committed to development for everyone). Development, for once, sounded less of a sick joke in Bihar, and whenever he talked of an end to Lalu's jungle raj, Nitish looked earnest in a state where violence is the most obvious political expression. It was a perfect blend of the right man and the right message in a state let down by its most indulged leader.

ARUN JAITLEY: His idea to project Nitish as the leader helped the alliance

SHAHNAWAZ HUSSAIN: Tore apart Lalu's base, especially in east Bihar

DIGVIJAY SINGH: Has not learnt lessons from the rout two years ago in Madhya Pradesh

UMA BHARATI: Pulled in the crowds, has good rapport with new chief minister

SUSHIL MODI: Worked selflessly; has been rewarded with No. 2 position

PREM GUPTA: His behind-the-scenes machinations on behalf of Lalu finally came to a naught

The anatomy of defeat-and of victory-brings out another message, a damning one for the so-called national parties. They were all riding piggyback on regional parties. Some reached the destination, others fell by the wayside. The Congress, now reduced to a nine-seat irrelevance, chose Lalu, and did not reach anywhere, re-establishing its status as the fast declining force in the Hindi heartland. So was the misfortune of the communists. The BJP, now shining in Nitish's glow, had the right regional ally and got a new lease of life-and hope-after the debacle in the general elections. LJP's Ram Vilas Paswan, who made this election into a communal referendum on the necessity of a Muslim chief minister, and was abandoned by a large chunk of his own MLAs before the election, went alone and proved to be a leader on the wane. The 19 who joined Nitish had earned JD-U 19 easy seats in its formidable 87, making it the largest party in Bihar. So the big victory has a not-so-small stain of political immorality on it. The larger message, though, is: elections in India are increasingly won by individuals, not ideologies, most of which are incompatible with the times anyway; and the national parties have no individuals capable of winning elections and swaying the masses in the regions. The coming battles for the state assemblies in Tamil Nadu and West Bengal are bound to underline this inadequacy. The national parties need more of their own regional leaders to become truly national.

In Bihar at the moment, victory is painted in pink and saffron, the new colour combination of political renewal. Nitish, the chosen one, has a history-shifting mandate and has inherited a state in tatters.

PICTURE SPEAK
EATING CROW: Governor Buta Singh had denied Nitish a chance	BODY BLOW: Paswan was abandoned by his own MLAs

Expectations are high and the RJD spokesman was modest first and sarcastic a second later, like his shattered boss. "There is no permanent rejection in politics. People have given this verdict and we'll sit in the opposition. Lalu Prasad Yadav is still the leader of the poor," said Shivanand Tiwary, adding, "now let's see how Nitish Kumar is going to change Bihar in three months as he promised." Lalu himself was graceful in his first public reaction, then, as usual, attributed the defeat to conspiracies, which in Lalu's patios are always communal and feudal. The night before the verdict, while chatting with India Today, he, in spite of being "exhausted" and denied of "sound sleep", was miming with theatrical flourish Nitish Kumar as an adopted child in the lap of the feudalist.

CURSED LAND

Four out of every 10 persons in Bihar live below the poverty line against a national average of 2.25. Only one in 10 families in the state has access to elecricity while the national average is six out of 10 families. Bihar is among the worst connected states in the country. It has only 77 km of roads per 100 sq km, less than half of neighbouring Orissa. Gross enrolment in primary schools is 79 against the all-India figure of 95. GDP growth which was just below the national average in the 1980s fell to less than one third in the 90s.

That was an easy act for an accomplished performer in social kitsch, and whose nomination of his wife as chief minister was perhaps as daring an act as Caligula's nomination of his horse as a senator. The Bihar that Nitish promises to change is a wretched land made worse by Lalu's family values, and by his valueless politics of social justice. In the end, there was justice in the demolition.

On Coronation Day in Gandhi Maidan, Nitish Kumar, the new ruler of Pataliputra, may have been too overwhelmed by the moment to feel the weight of the crown. He has to rebuild from the ruins-and restore the faith of a people betrayed in the politics of liberation. Managing the mandate is a task much arduous than winning it.

- with Farzand Ahmed and Sanjay Kumar Jha

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