(Bihar Times) Migrants from Bihar have been served urgent notices from time to time, in many states of their own country, to pack up and go home. After Assam, Maharashtra, Punjab, Delhi, Goa and Tripura which other state is going to discover that it is these Bihari migrants who carry the bacillus of dirt, filth, disease and crime and infect the host state and hence it is not safe to have them with in their borders?

The Biharis are subject to persecution which is both random and routine because the mere label of Bihari seems to have become a necessary and sufficient cause. Snide remarks if they are lucky, and savagery if they run out of luck, are constantly at their heels. They are the Jews without the redeeming and comforting assurance that they are God’s chosen people. George Steiner once said, “When he is pelted in Argentina or mocked in Kiev, the Jewish child knows that there is a corner of the earth where he is the master, the gun is his.” But Biharis know that they have severed their umbilical chords with their homes. They must rough it out and resist the strong emotional tug, especially in times of crisis, to go back home. Because for many of them their home is only a country of the mind, without the wherewithal to sustain all its inhabitants.

Migrants in search of livelihood or better opportunities are often viewed with suspicion, because they do not fit the cognitive, linguistic or the cultural map of the world they migrate to. They also compete for jobs, sometimes drive down wages and hence arouse hostilities of the local people. But in our times, the politically produced xenophobia by parties like the MNS is the most common threat. Mumbai has seen sporadic campaign against outsiders and currently the north Indians are at the receiving end. One does not know how real is the threat of cultural inundation but in view of the recent delimitation of parliamentary constituencies the concentration of migrants in urban areas does raise anxieties of the political kind. Levi Strauss who has spent a lifetime studying the strategies of various groups in coping with the threat by groups designated as the ‘other’ or ‘stranger’ suggests that alternative but complementary strategies of assimilation, exclusion or extermination have been resorted to in order to tackle the problem of aliens, and strangers. The Biharis have seen a mixture of all the three strategies resorted to against them.

In the cosmopolitan Mumbai, it is being decreed that the bhaiyas must now adapt themselves to the local ways, learn the local language, and adopt local customs. The topical bone of contention is the festival of chath, which is celebrated with great devotion and fervour by many Biharis. In short amnesty would come their way only on condition that they cultivate voluntary amnesia; abdicate their right to be themselves, slough off their Bihari identity and grow a new skin. So when a couple of hundreds of them are harassed, or dozens of their taxis are burnt, even a few of them are killed to feed the media beast, the mobs goaded by the upwardly mobile politician are only advancing the cause of cultural assimilation. If the bhaiyas do not deliberately court amnesia of the mental kind, the amnesia of the physical kind can be induced by obliterating and consigning to the memory hole the means of their meager sustenance, be it their taxi, their thela or small shop.

Those who are spearheading the campaign know it only too well that it is these migrants, who live cheek by jowl in the congested areas, who are so undemanding and are largely cut off from municipal services, keep the city going by their taxis, thelas, khatals, and dhobi ghats. But the political mind is also aware that the mob impulse of hatred is the surest glue to keep their flock together, as also the easiest method to enlist many more to their fold. So long has it occupied itself with the mathematics of fracturing society into viable total of fractions that the political mind has become obsolete and incapable of devising capacious and inclusive policies. On occasions like this a call to solidarity against the common enemy helps displace the awareness from intractable problems. The misfortune of the migrant Biharis serves to keep the political pot boiling for their reluctant hosts, as well as well as their champions back home. Ideally such occasions should compel deep and honest introspection in Bihar, and reinforce the determination to pull Bihar by the bootstraps. But all that it does is to unleash jingoism of the worst kind and we tend to overlook the fact that the poor cannot afford to have too much pride. The fragile political consensus witnessed in the aftermath of Rahul’s killing was but transient and spent itself in a mindless agitational violence. In the end all that it achieved was the destruction and vandalisation of its own meager resources instead of some constructive activism.

The civil society in Bihar appears to have abdicated all responsibility towards it self by delegating power in the hands of politicians. The more there is a perceived need for concerted action in the realm of civil society, the more socially disengaged we seem to become. To take just one issue which has become a trite and timeworn cliché –the creation of a Bihari identity- would indicate our commitment to our state. It has been in wide currency for quite some time now and yet how many strides have we taken towards extinguishing all other loyalities to forge this identity?
The Bihari fleeing from his persecutors is reduced to his casteist identity no sooner than he enters his own home state. It seems that the landscape of Bihar itself, the cultural environment educes a different but deeply internalized sense of identity and belonging. It is the caste, which is the whetstone upon which he sharpens his sense of himself. Neither distance, nor cultural separation could obliterate it. Even in distant lands and foreign countries the Biharis are reported to have separate caste associations. For in the view of a large part of Bihari society, the existential question is defined solely and squarely in casteist terms: who are you and what is your justification for being? To answer this question means that you recognize not only your privileges and obligations, entitlements and opportunities but also position yourself in, however subtle a manner, on the chessboard of caste alignments. There are no exemptions from this fate, whether you are a career politician, academician, doctor, or a civil servant. It must be reiterated that in Bihar the ‘political” necessarily means a no holds barred competitive casteist struggle. In its wake it has brought the political way of doing every thing. So it is no surprise that universities and colleges turn out to be casteist outposts and the struggle to wrest them out of the control of rival groups witnesses the whole hearted involvement of every appurtenance of the polity. (The author had an occasion to investigate, under the orders of the Patna High Court the award of a fraudulent and bogus degree to the wife of a senior IPS officer. His report running in more than 70 pages, which deals with the rot in universities, is available in the Patna High court library. Brief references can be had in the following http://www.indiatoday.com/itoday/20010806/education.shtml
http://www.liberalsindia.com/freedomfirst/ff457-03.html

Recruitments to public services often carry vague insinuations of casteist preferences. If the various reports that appear, from time to time, in the local news papers were to be believed, the caste composition of officers is also delicately factored into their transfers and postings and requirements of professionalism sometimes take a back seat to maintaining the caste balance. There is a popular perception that the administration in Bihar during particular regimes has been characterized by a colossal waste, because in these dispensations there are always some elements that have to be suffered but kept out of action .A deliberate retrenchment of the available human resources is by now an accepted method of personnel management. So at any given time there is a significant body of public servants, - sulking, alienated and withdrawn- because they think they do not belong to the winning combination, therefore, are either indifferent to the prospects of project Bihar, or are secretly longing for its failure. When the administration becomes so polarized, public policy problems get bogged down in a mental swamp, and a severe governance deficit is the nevitable outcome. The traditional merit based methods of governance faced with a problem like this, finds itself stumped, because these have not been dealt with in the standard literature on public administration. To break this impasse a new public sphere needs to be created where non-partisan, apolitical body of people could engage in critical debate, build mutual trust and a sense of commonality to counter this pre modern mindset. The point needs considerable elaboration and shall be taken up some time later.

But should these proposals appear to be too optimistic or too impractical to carry out, it would be well worth referring to the original provocation to the MNS- the celebration of Chath by the Biharis in Mumbai. Those who have observed the Chhath celebrations in Bihar would agree that it appears as if human nature had changed on those three days. The mutual goodwill, fellow feeling, spirit of volunteerism and the culture of compliance shown by the people, transports Bihar into idylls of an existence where police, municipal services, and even the government seem to have become dispensable. Only if the Biharis could learn the formula for this magical transformation, and make these three days last three months or even thirty days! They would then have people queuing up to come to Bihar and not otherwise.

* Author is a senior IPS officer currently posted as DG, vigilance, Bihar Electricity Board. He can also be contacted at http://manojenath.blogspot.com

Comment

comments...

Friends,
In the same India Today Article by Sri Sanjay Kumar Jha, there was also a reference to Sri Manoje Nath. It said- "Manoje Nath, a 1973-batch IPS officer posted as the commissioner, civil defence, in Patna has the reputation of being fiercely independent, honest and upright. The Patna High Court has assigned him tasks on many occasions. In the famous Ms Shikha Gupta case relating to corruption in education, Nath's report led to the prosecution of four
vice-chancellors and even a retired High Court judge, who had served as the VC of Magadh University. His report on the state of higher education in Bihar is as much a detailed expose of the "academic underworld" as it is a work of literary merit. Nath has not restrained himself to writing just inquiry reports. A prolific writer, he has written on subjects ranging from science fiction to globalisation. His series of humourous articles "Gulliver in Patiliputra" and "Modest Proposals" in local newspapers have been very popular." But what is hurting is the fact that the same Sri Manoje Nath had to pass thru the trouble from an anonymous letter which leveled allegations ranging from amassing of wealth to sexual abuse against some top IPS officers in Bihar, including him and DG (Police Building)
Sri Anand Shankar. A private TV channel had in its news telecast on December 1 shown the copy of the complaints highlighting these allegations and claimed that Chief Minister Sri Nitish Kumar had ordered an inquiry into these allegations. While most of others would have felt crestfallen and would have turned defensive and jittery, Sri Manoje Nath immediately rose to the occasion to do the needful by writing a letter to the Chief Secretary seeking an impartial inquiry into how they reached the TV channel, dubbing the letter as stage-managed. Interestingly, what happened later was that the original copy of the "pseudonymous complaint" got disappeared from the files in the State Home Department, prompting the authorities to lodge an FIR in this connection and every one concerned denying having ordered any kind of enquiry in this anonymous complaint. This is how one has to pay the price for being honest and upright. And this is what one would like to call real courage and grit.

Amitabh Thakur
SP (Intll),
Faizabad

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The article is not easy to grasp for persons like us who have only few minutes to go through. With whatever little understanding we could have from article, I entirely agree with the major idea i.e. Caste is one of the fundamental problem. However caste issue which is so deeply ingrained in fellow Biharis that "creation of new public sphere where non-partisan, apolitical body of people could engage in critical debate, build mutual trust and a sense of commonality to counter this pre modern mindset" may help resolving but is very difficult to implement.

As a layman, what I have observed that one comman factor among the developed socities is presence and acceptance of "Diversity". Migrant is one of the important pillar which creates diversity. As and when Bihar able to attract migrants the caste factor will certainly be diminshed in day to day life in Bihar. and for that to happen State Administration in Bihar has one of the most critical role to play.

It is really not difficult to attract migrants. In last few years I have observed that in so called developed parts of India, like Maharashtra, Banglore, Mumbai, New Delhi the corruption is highly pervaiding at state/city level . However they are able to pin point Biharis just because in Bihar the level of corruption, inefficiency and duration had been higher rather much higher . To undo that level of corruption and inefficiency there is no other way but to become much less corrupt and much more efficient. This is particularly important for administration.

There is another plus point at this moment is that the continuous sneering and scornment has created a pool of dedicated Biharis who are very serious to do something to undo this all. In fact many of them are already in the field.

Another incidental observation is that Shiv Sena (Now MNS) whenever targetted any particular community. That communitie's state later on became highly developed. They started with Gujarati's in late 60, then South Indians and now Biharis. Therfore it is only matter of time for Bihar to become developed.

Amen
--
Anand Lakhmani

Mumbai
alakhmani@gmail.com