In the increasing 'market-centric' economy of India, the stock of a person or an event may be measured in terms of either TRP rating in the electronic channels or the advertisement space in covers in the print media, but the ultimate hallmark of its standing will depend on its position in the 'stock market'. On that particular count, the ongoing assembly election in Bihar is outside the market pale, since the outcome of the assembly election will not affect the national economic policies. This is quite understandable, because the share of Bihar in the aggregate national market is little more than 4 percent, with 8 percent of the population inhabiting the state. This means that quite a large section of the population in the state is still outside the 'cash-nexus'. Even otherwise, Bihar's internal resource base is so low that its annual budget is much smaller than that of municipal corporations of such metropolitan cities like Bombay, Kolkata, Chennai or Delhi. Only once, when Laloo Prasad got incarnated in the late nineties in the fodder - scam case during the reign of I. K. Guzral and Deva Gowda, Bihar events did affect the national stock exchange.

Unfortunately, Bihar has not been able to unburden its historical legacy. Being part of the permanent settled area, with the installations of the intermediaries between the tenant and the state, a tenurial innovation crafted by Lord Cornwallis in 1793, the rent seeking has been the most key element in buccaneering accumulation in the state. In the process,not only the economic but also the societal incentive structure got aborted in Bihar. In the absence of land reform in the post independent period, other than abolishing the intermediaries, the reverberations of iniquitous tennurial relations still resounds in Bihar. So the politics in the state is still based on the fall out of earlier archaic tennurial relation, rather than on the grammar of market transactions which are still outside the cognitive world of not only the 'have-not' but 'haves' as well. Further, in the absence of a stock exchange, except for a brief period, the literacy for industrial investment or stock transactions remained elusive for the 'rentier' class of Bihar, although it was undivided Bihar that had 40 percent of the country's mineral resources. The same class, after the abolition of intermediaries in the post-independence period, made beeline for the entry in the provincial administrative structure, in the absence of industries or corporate organizations, either through 'deceit' or through apparently open 'competitive' examinations. In the process, the number of government employees increased from 1.79 lakh in 1961 to 5.48 lakh in 1981, even though the capacity of the state to absorb the burgeoning government employees with astronomical pay structure, continuously decreased with massive public finance crisis. Bihar did not have a Kamraj Nadar who could script a new development charter for the state where, leave alone the elite, even the subalterns had a role.

In this backdrop, the politics of 'social emancipation' mediated through peasant, socialist, communist and radical organizations has now become essentially limited to 'positive discrimination' in the state structure, although it had initially aimed at fundamental transformation. While the 'rentier elite' was the role model for the subaltern in Bihar in the matter of entry to the sacred portals of state structure, the implementation of Mungeri Lal Commission earlier by Karpoori Thakur and Mandal Commission later by V. P. Singh gave unprecedented fillip to the politics of positive discrimination. It not only ensured their entry into the state structure, but it also resulted in increasing empowerment of the subaltern and democratization of the polity. While Karpoori Thakur's politics of positive discrimination had socialistic predilection, V. P. Singh's strategy was real politic to first checkmate Devi Lall and then electoral populism. Ironically, V. P. Singh advocated for positive discrimination in the state structure, even though he was the first Finance Minister who had initiated the process of opening of the economy and dismantling of the state in 1985. Apparently, the contradiction between the logic of positive discrimination and the withdrawal of the state is yet to get resolved into political system of Bihar. Thus all the three major formations (UDF, NDA, LJP-CPI) or minor parties (CPI (ML) SP, BSP etc) are yet to get out of the 'state' centric trajectory of politics, in spite of the presence of Congress in UDF and BJP in NDA. Bihar is not in the ambit of bipolar politics, as witnessed in the major market centric states. In Bihar, it is a multipolar contest, mainly under the leadership of the political formations, all committed to 'social justice', where parties of traditional elites like Congress or BJP, have been accommodated in either front as a junior partner. The crucial challenge for Bihar now is how to graduate from a 'socially enabled' to 'economically enabled' society. Until and unless the Bihar assembly election comes under the national stock exchange radar, the politics of the state will not be considered to be 'arrived'.

(Published in Financial Express , Nov. 01. 05)

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Dr. Shaibal Gupta*
Member Secretary,
Asian Development Research Institute (ADRI)
Patna
E-mail : shaibalgupta@yahoo.co.uk

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