{"id":59687,"date":"2009-05-30T18:07:25","date_gmt":"2009-05-30T18:07:25","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/test.tehelka.com\/?p=59687"},"modified":"2009-05-30T18:07:25","modified_gmt":"2009-05-30T18:07:25","slug":"a-tide-in-the-affairs-of-bihar","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/tehelka.com\/a-tide-in-the-affairs-of-bihar\/","title":{"rendered":"A Tide In The Affairs Of Bihar"},"content":{"rendered":"

The state\u2019s results show how Nitish Kumar split low-caste Hindu and Muslim votes to beat Lalu Yadav at his own game, says <\/em>Ajit Sahi<\/strong>
\n

\"Sweeping<\/a>
Sweeping win<\/strong> Nitish Kumar gets a massive mandate
Photo: AP<\/figcaption><\/figure>
\nNO FORECAST<\/strong> could predict the sweep of the final score. Nitish Kumar\u2019s alliance: 32; Lalu Yadav\u2019s alliance: 4. Game, set and match, Nitish. Just how did Kumar, the mild-mannered chief minister of Bihar, never known for political cunning, make mincemeat of Lalu Yadav, Bihar\u2019s iconic backward caste leader, one who has ruthlessly decimated many a mass leader in his 35-year career?<\/span>
\nThe answer lies as much in Kumar\u2019s crafty politics of caste and religion as in his electoral plank of development, projected in the name of the 24-month rule of Bihar by his National Democratic Alliance (NDA), which includes the BJP.<\/span>
\n\u201cThis election was a hurricane, just like in 1977,\u201d an ecstatic Ram Sundar Das, a leader of the Nitish Kumar-led Janata Dal-United (JD-U), told TEHELKA. His allusion is to the historic election of 32 years ago that swept former Prime Minister Indira Gandhi out of power after the infamous Emergency. Das is the surprise victor over dalit giant, Ram Vilas Paswan, in the Lok Sabha constituency of Hajipur, from where Paswan had made his Lok Sabha debut in 1977 and retained it eight out of nine times since then \u2014 losing it only last week.<\/span><\/p>\n

This election was a hurricane, just like in 1977\u2019, says Ram Sundar Das of the JD-U<\/strong><\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

For Das, who joined the JD-U just before last month\u2019s elections after years in the political wilderness, the taste of victory is sweeter. He had lost the chief minister\u2019s job to Lalu in 1990 after their party had won the most seats in Bihar\u2019s Assembly, an event that heralded Lalu\u2019s 15-year rule over Bihar until Nitish ended Lalu\u2019s wife, Rabri Devi\u2019s reign as chief minister in 2005.<\/span>
\nThe results of this year\u2019s Lok Sabha elections in Bihar are historic in many ways. A split among Lalu\u2019s caste brethren saw many Yadavs desert him and the candidates of his Rashtriya Janata Dal (RJD). (Ironically, besides Lalu, none of the three other RJD MPs elected last week are Yadavs. They are all Rajputs.) For example, in Buxar, a constituency adjoining Uttar Pradesh, Lalu and his wife failed to woo the Yadavs despite aggressive campaigning. Although their nominee won, his rival, Daddan Singh \u2018Pahalwan\u2019, got more than 1.2 lakh votes in the Yadav-dominated region.
\nSimilarly, in many constituencies, dalits appeared to have rejected Paswan and the candidates of his Lok Janshakti Party (LJP). Obviously, Lalu and Paswan failed to \u201ctransfer\u201d their \u201cvote-banks\u201d to each other as they had hoped to do when they deserted the Congress and allied with each other after the elections were called. Stunningly, Paswan lost even in Raghopur, a Yadav-dominated segment of Hajipur that Rabri Devi represents in the Bihar Assembly.<\/span><\/p>\n

The Muslim vote has made the JD-U upbeat about the 2010 Assembly elections<\/span><\/strong><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

On the other hand, large numbers of Muslims voted for the JD-U, overcoming their loathing for the party\u2019s key ally, the BJP. In Bhagalpur, the Muslims even voted for the BJP\u2019s Shahnawaz Hussain, a former central minister, giving him a win. In fact, the Muslim vote has made the JD-U upbeat about the Assembly elections due in October 2010. \u201cThis time, some Muslims did not vote for the NDA because we projected LK Advani as prime minister,\u201d says Rajya Sabha MP and JD-U spokesman, Shivanand Tiwari. \u201cBut for the Assembly, they will vote for us with both hands.\u201d<\/span>
\nTHAT THE<\/strong> Muslim vote has shifted was evident in the Phulwarisharif Assembly segment of the Pataliputra Lok Sabha constituency. The Muslims here voted for JD-U nominee Ranjan Prasad Yadav, who spectacularly defeated Lalu Yadav. Lalu lost in four out of the six Assembly segments of Pataliputra, with the Yadav votes going, quite obviously, to his rival. He scraped through to the Lok Sabha from another seat, Saran. Another strategy that paid off for Nitish Kumar was focussing on the \u201cextremely backward castes\u201d, or EBCs, which account for over 20 percent of Bihar\u2019s eight crore people. \u201cThis was a social polarisation that tremendously helped the NDA,\u201d says Patna-based political commentator Arun Kumar Ashesh. Nitish Kumar\u2019s government has wooed the EBCs, which include some 100 poorest sub-castes, by running separate schemes for their economic uplift, including a 20- percent reservation for them in village panchayats\u00a0(See TEHELKA cover story \u201cIs This Man Going To Surprise Everyone\u201d, May 16, 2009).<\/em><\/span>
\nSimilarly, Kumar created a separate category for 18 sub-castes of dalits, calling them \u201cMaha Dalits\u201d, and ran economic schemes for them specifically. So severe was the rejection of the RJD-LJP by the lower-caste Hindu and Muslim voters that the LJP was decimated in the six districts of northeast Bihar, which are collectively referred to as the \u201cKosi belt\u201d, named after a river there. The Yadavs, Muslims and dalits \u2014 the traditional voters of Lalu and Paswan \u2014 dominate this belt.<\/span>
\n[box]
\nCRIMINALS AND THEIR RELATIVES WHO LOST<\/span><\/strong><\/span>
\nCONGRESS
\nRanjita Ranjan<\/strong>
\nWife of Pappu Yadav Supaul<\/span>
\nINDEPENDENT
\nShanti Priya<\/strong>
\nMother of Pappu Yadav Purnea<\/span>
\nRJD
\nHeena Shahabuddin<\/strong>
\nWife of Mohammad Shahabuddin Siwan<\/span>
\nCONGRESS
\nLovely Anand<\/strong>
\nWife of Anand Mohan Sheohar<\/span>
\nLJP
\nVeena Devi<\/strong>
\nWife of Suraj Bhan Singh Nawada<\/span>
\nJD-U
\nMunna Shukla<\/strong>
\nVaishali<\/span>
\nLJP
\nRama Singh<\/strong>
\nArrah<\/span>
\nJD-U
\nPrabhunath Singh<\/strong>
\nMaharajganj<\/span>
\nLJP
\nZakir Khan<\/strong>
\nAraria<\/span>
\nRJD
\nTaslimuddin<\/strong>
\nKishanganj<\/span>
\nCONGRESS\u00a0
\nSadhu Yadav<\/strong>
\nWest Champaran<\/span>
\nBSP\u00a0
\nAnwarul Haq<\/strong>
\nSheohar<\/span>
\nRJD\u00a0
\nJay Prakash Yadav<\/strong>
\nBanka<\/span>
\n[\/box]
\nThere may be a grain of truth in the belief that Lalu and Paswan made a mistake by breaking away from the Congress. \u201cIn more than 20 constituencies, the total number of votes polled by the candidates of the Congress and the RJD-LJP exceeded those gained by the NDA candidate,\u201d says political commentator Srikant in Patna. \u201cHad the Congress and RJD-LJP stayed together as the United Progressive Alliance (UPA), it would have been tougher for the NDA.\u201d At many places, the Congress attracted the Muslims in droves, a trend seen in Uttar Pradesh, West Bengal, Andhra Pradesh and Maharashtra, thus splitting them from the RJD-LJP, for whom the Muslims voted earlier.<\/span>
\nJD-U spokesperson Tiwari, however, pooh-poohs the claims that a combined UPA could have challenged the NDA. \u201cThe people here are so angry with Lalu- Paswan,\u201d he says, \u201cthat the Congress wouldn\u2019t even have got the few votes it did in Bihar had it allied with them.\u201d In some 18 seats, the NDA nominee got more votes than the combined vote share of the Congress and the RJD-LJP. According to Tiwari, Lalu lives in the \u201cold world\u201d, believing that caste and not development decided votes. Widely credited for social engineering during his rule from 1990 to 2005 that made the backwards castes aware of their political clout, Lalu is ironically seen as responsible for their desertion this time.<\/span>
\nIt is said that once awakened, Bihar\u2019s backward castes came to expect a much better deal from life than Lalu could offer during his and his wife\u2019s governments. \u201cPoor Biharis began to go out of the state and desire the levels of development they saw there,\u201d says Srikant. Agrees Ashesh, \u201cNitish\u2019s developmentoriented politics is the logical next step of Lalu\u2019s caste politics of the last decade.\u201d<\/span>
\nIf there is any decimation, however, in Bihar worse than Lalu\u2019s or Paswan\u2019s, it is of the criminal class (see box). Says Bihar\u2019s Home Secretary Afzal Amanullah: \u201cI can assure you that you are not going to see these criminals or their wives and mothers in Parliament for a long time.\u201d<\/span>
\najit@tehelka.com<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The state\u2019s results show how Nitish Kumar split low-caste Hindu and Muslim votes to beat Lalu Yadav at his own game, says Ajit Sahi<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":76,"featured_media":59698,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[56],"tags":[8626,8785,8786,842,8787,8788,8789,8790,8791,1027,8792,2683,1345,8793,8794,8795,3126,8796,2684,8797,8798,8799,8800,8801,8802,8803,8804,8805,8806,8807,8808,8809,6852,8810],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/tehelka.com\/rest-api\/wp\/v2\/posts\/59687"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/tehelka.com\/rest-api\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/tehelka.com\/rest-api\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tehelka.com\/rest-api\/wp\/v2\/users\/76"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tehelka.com\/rest-api\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=59687"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/tehelka.com\/rest-api\/wp\/v2\/posts\/59687\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tehelka.com\/rest-api\/"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/tehelka.com\/rest-api\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=59687"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tehelka.com\/rest-api\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=59687"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tehelka.com\/rest-api\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=59687"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}