March 22, 1999

Confronted with certain defeat in the Rajya Sabha, the government looks for ways to extract maximum political mileage and keep the pressure on Laloo.

By Harinder Baweja

It is not often that a country's poorest and least progressive region acquires a name for making or breaking political reputations. It is a comment on contemporary India that Bihar has become the focus of so much attention in recent weeks. It created constitutional history when the Rabri Devi-led RJD government was reinstated -- the first time President's rule has been revoked thus. Moving to a more mundane plane, not one of the actors in the Bihar drama has quite distinguished itself. The BJP was foolhardy enough to use Article 356 without any guarantee of ratification by the Rajya Sabha. If it now claims it was doing so to prove a laboured point, it is resorting to the most perverse logic possible. The Congress, which first held the RJD regime culpable and then bailed it out, has been opportunist in the worst traditions of opposition. As for Laloo Prasad Yadav's RJD, its glee at being restored to office cannot hide the sheer shamelessness of its rapacious and value-scarce governance.

Now, of course, Laloo has promised land reforms in feudal north Bihar, where a massacre of Dalits led to Rabri's dismissal in the first place. The Congress, having saved the Yadav couple, has signed itself a post-dated cheque that it hopes to encash at some later date, near the next elections perhaps. The BJP is using the Dalit card to paint its rivals as the enemies of India's wretched. Which of these strategies will succeed? More important, will Bihar see even a semblance of good governance? What will be the larger impact on national politics? Who gained from this dismal episode? Who lost?

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