People's Democracy

MOST newspapers would have us believe that the defeat of Lalu is an important achievement, it does not matter who wins. They would also have us believe that it is the people of Bihar who have given a clear choice for BJP and Nitish Kumar. Both assumptions need to be questioned.

There are no two opinions about it that much has been wrong with Bihar under the ‘Lalu rule’. But it would be a mistake to draw the lesson from this that those who have now defeated him—Nitish Kumar and the BJP—represent an advance towards an agenda that democratic forces could look forward to. On the contrary, one can expect a right wing turn on all counts. Bihar is in for worse times!

The experience with the neighbouring state government of Orissa should make this clear. Orissa has seen an alarming growth in the ideological influence and organisational networks of the Sangh Parivar, apart from Rajasthan and Madhya Pradesh where the BJP holds the state governments. Any government established in collaboration with the BJP results in political gain for the Sangh Parivar and creation of a conducive set up for the implementation of a right wing agenda.

It is not that the Congress can be said to have gone slow on liberalisation policies, but it has to contend with opposition from the left parties. The BJP need not pay any heed to the any progressive force. The BJP is not only viciously anti-left, it is opposed to the idea of a federal structure and does not consider itself bound to respect the sentiments of regional parties. It is never accountable to parties it shares power with, nor to the agendas of the people these parties represent. The BJP has also been freely pro-liberalisation and utilises the space created for it in alliances at the state levels to determinedly push through its communal agenda. It is accountable to the RSS alone.

In Orissa, the larger alliance with Naveen Patnaik at the national level and support for him in the state has been crucial for the expansion of the Sangh Parivar’s activities in the state. Reports of various citizens’ groups present an alarming picture. On the one hand the tribal population in the state has been the focus of their programmes of ‘education’ and ‘re-conversions’, accompanied by virulent propaganda against Christians and introduction of Hinduised rituals and customs among them, some of which work against the interests of tribal women. It is also well known that the state government has thrown open its mines to multinational companies at rates and conditionalities that work against national interests as well as the local population.

Periods of instability and transition have been utilised by the Sangh Parivar with quick facility to further their political agenda in Jharkhand and Chhattisgarh. Studies by social scientists and political activists have noted their attempts to divide people along communal lines in these two states, and also documented the spread of their networks through the Vanvasi Kalyan Parishad and the Ekal Vidyalyas. In fact if the Sangh Parivar has made serious inroads anywhere it is in the tribal areas in states where it has been overty supported by state governments. Short periods of Congress victories in these two states while the BJP was in power in the Centre did not prevent this advance, because the political alignments in these states still accorded enough space to them even as these states were formed and now of course the BJP holds these two states. In Uttaranchal, too while the Congress now holds the government, the whole movement for a separate state had made possible collaborates of social forces that give a significant presence to the BJP even as it is defeated in the state by the Congress, which itself is now forced to accommodate much of the BJP agenda in the form of religious tourism, Uttaranchal as Dev Bhumi, etc.

The expectations from the new government are therefore more than a little misplaced, even if one were disappointed with Lalu Prasad’s regime. And the victory of the Nitish Kumar-BJP combine, due in no small measure to the division of the secular parties, is likely to see concessions to multinationals in backward Bihar (much as in Orissa) in the immediate future rather than any "development" for the people. If anything the BJP is already flexing its muscles—it has found a foothold it badly needed in Bihar—and certainly one cannot expect such spectacular acts from Nitish Kumar (as Lalu effected) as the arrest of Advani during the rath yatra in 1990 because it harboured threat to communal harmony. We have somehow got accustomed to taking this communal harmony for granted in Bihar. This can no longer be valid in the coming years.

Caste conflicts are now increasingly presented as another form of ‘identity politics’ by those in the media and through new modes of analysis in social sciences. But as any political being will know, and as Lalu must surely have learnt by now, caste is not a matter of identity alone. In the assertions by the Most Backward Castes and Dalits, which must surely follow disappointment with the Nitish Kumar-BJP combine, this winning combination can only oppose these assertions. And if Gujarat and Rajasthan are any indications, their strategy will involve organizing the Most Backward Castes as storm troopers against Muslims rather than for their class interests or anti-caste struggles.

The polarisation could well be introduced sooner rather than later, with the BJP in alliance: Bihar is in for a right wing populism of the Sangh Parivar kind which pitches its developmental solutions in terms of pro-liberalisation economic policies representing landed and upper caste interests, with appeals to the English-educated middles classes who aspire for all-India civil services and see modernity as arriving in Bihar through multinationals. Bihar has already been reduced by these classes and by the corporate owned media as essentially a ‘law and order’ problem. If this law and order could somehow be maintained, paradise like conditions could result in the form of haven for FDI and all such things….

With symptoms being diagnosed in such narrow and shallow terms, the political leadership of this country as well as the media is happy reading victory for Bihar (‘Lalu is out, Bihar is in’, ‘Lalu Loses, Bihar Wins’, ‘Congrats Bihar’) with the defeat of Lalu, with one newspaper (The Indian Express) even issuing instructions everyday on its front page to Nitish Kumar (quite oblivious that he would need the BJP’s consent in any case!) on how he can proceed with solving the ‘law and order’ problem (never mind what people else voted them in for).

What we have seen really is a minister having to resign within hours of taking oath, for complicity in a scam. And newly appointed ministers and ruling combine legislators capturing bungalows of their choice, taking over jobs of painters, having bill boards of gates of these bungalows inscribed with their names before allotments take place or the old occupants blink an eye! A government that works? A victory that needs be celebrated? Only the most cynical can think it is a change for the better in Bihar.