Arvind
N. Das is an expert on Bihar, previously worked as an
editor(research) in The Times of India and currently working
as an editor of Biblio.
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As
yet another round of elections -- including an electoral
contest once again in that perennially politically volatile
state, Bihar -- looms large on the political horizon, it
is important to remember that Bihar is to India what India
is to the world.
India has set many world records: the largest number of
poor people eking out existence in inhuman poverty, the
highest number of illiterate people, the greatest number
of meetings that Jaswant Singh has had with Strobe Talbot.
Similarly, Bihar has set many standards within India: it
has a larger number of people under the poverty line than
any other state; it has the worst abuses of human rights
and it has had George Fernandes politicking there more than
anywhere else. Thus, Indians outside Bihar have little cause
to sneer at the nation's second most-populous state: the
world looks at India in precisely the same way that India
looks at Bihar.
Hence, despite the election fatigue that afflicts the citizens
during the fiftieth anniversary of the republic, the coming
elections in Bihar -- and in Orissa, Manipur and Haryana
too, it must be added -- are significant and their importance
cannot be minimised. The shenanigans of George Fernandes
and Jaya Jaitley, Laloo Prasad Yadav and Rabri Devi, Nitish
Kumar and Ram Bilas Paswan, Yashwant Sinha and Rita Varma,
Sharad Yadav and Sonia Gandhi, Sushil Kumar Modi and Shatrughan
Sinha, Harkishan Singh Surjeet and H. D. Deve Gowda, ridiculous
as they appear, cannot hide the fact that the coming elections
in the state are serious business and will affect not only
Bihar but coalition politics in the rest of the country
too, leaving their impact on stability or otherwise not
only in Patna but also in New Delhi.
After all, Bihar not a "peripheral entity" which can be
ignored. In politics as with computer-generated cinematic
reptiles, size matters. The sheer size of Bihar ensures
that it will have a significant place in the globalised
world: it is geographically the size of France and has more
people than Germany! Its mineral resources rival those of
the European Union and its agricultural as well as human
resource potential is immense. It is true that the value
of its mineral resources is fast eroding on account of technological
changes: for instance, it is now becoming more economical
to recycle metals like copper and aluminium than to mine
and smelt new ore. Hence many copper, bauxite and mica mines
have been closed. Nevertheless, the state still has other
mineral resources, including uranium, which will remain
important for many years to come despite the fact that they
have been subject to the most callous misuse.
In fact, the fires that rage under the ground in the coal
seams of Sindri are evidence of the wasteful and ecologically
disastrous, indeed predatory, capitalism that has devastated
the state. In this respect, the history of "modern" Bihar
does not signify the failure of the socialist state, the
current whipping boy of the largely uninformed neo-Thatcherites;
it signifies the propensity of Third World capitalism mainly
to destroy without having the vitality to create anew. Despite
the early integration of the commercial resources of the
state into the processes of "globalisation" (export of opium
to China, Patna rice to Scotland, coal and iron ore outside
the state, etc.), the nature of capitalism that developed
in Bihar -- and in India, for that matter -- was distorted,
dependent on archaic land relations and outmoded cultures.
Capitalism did not bring about "modernity" in Bihar: it
merely combined the worst of agrarian pre-modernity with
post-industrial post-modernity! Simultaneously, it also
pauperised and brutalised its people. The unfair and exploitative
utilisation of Bihar as an "internal colony" (through schemes
like freight equalisation, low cesses and royalties on its
minerals, adverse ratios of capital deposits and advances,
etc.) are aspects of a distorted political economy. And
so badly has the system become flawed that it responds neither
to human suffering nor to ecological disasters. It appears
that it is only the spread of ever-cheaper weapons and class-neutral
landmines in Bihar that makes those who rule India wake
up to the state's realities.
Of course, the most profound tragedy is that almost all
the leaders of the state who are engaged in the electoral
combat are not in the least bothered about these issues.
Their concern is merely with capturing power. It is for
this reason that even during the current election campaigns,
there is no mention of such matters; what appears daily
in the newspapers are merely reports of leaders trying to
outsmart each other. Even the astounding levels of corruption,
inefficiency and waste institutionalised by the ruling couple
does not cause outrage; it is merely subsumed under Harkishan
Singh Surjeet's sophistry.
Nor does the horrible series of massacres of the rural poor
-- cynically referred to as "Harijan hunting" -- trouble
the calloused conscience of the national political parties
any more. Instead, the particular bestowing of ministerial
positions at the Centre and patronisation of members of
a particular caste by the BJP, even at the cost of annoying
old loyalists, shows that the party is more interested in
wooing the likes of the lawless Ranbir Sena than in really
combating "jungle raj". At the same time, the mutually warring
rabble that tries to pass off as the National Democratic
Alliance has no consistency even with regard to the very
shape of the state. The BJP has turned Jharkhand into Vananchal
by sheer semantic sleight and wants to carve that out of
the state. Its valued ally, the Samata Party wants no less
than Rs 25,000 crore as compensation and hey presto, the
Prime Minister announces schemes totalling Rs 26,000 crore
without batting an eyelid. It is another matter that mere
announcement of schemes or even the laying of foundation
stones do not make for either development or the creation
of even a moth-eaten Jharkhand. Meanwhile, Laloo Prasad
Yadav who once championed Jharkhand today vows that Vananchal
will only be made over his dead body.
It is in the context of such cynical politicking that the
people of Bihar are called upon to exercise their franchise.
There are choices enough before them. In this multi-cornered
contest, one corner is occupied by the NDA which has the
BJP, Samata Party, JD (U) and the Bihar People's Party,
each more interested in defeating the other while keeping
post-poll possibilities of aligning with Laloo Prasad Yadav's
RJD in the case of the state getting a hung assembly. In
the other corner of the electoral ring is the curious grouping
of the RJD, CPM, and miscellaneous former Prime ministers.
In the third corner stand the Congress, looking lost even
before the fight has begun, various Jharkhand factions,
a plethora of parties like those "owned" by luminaries like
Jagannath Mishra and Ajit Singh. And, in the last corner
is the "Fourth Front" comprising the CPI, CPI (ML-Liberation),
RSP, Forward Bloc and other elements of the Left forsaken
by the CPM.
In this context, it should be clear enough that change in
Bihar can only be brought about by those involved in agrarian
transformation, ecological protection, industrial renewal
and human development. These are the forces which seek to
implement land reform and other laws in its countryside,
resist deleterious "development" which degrades and even
devastates the environment and habitat of its peoples, struggle
to prevent the state's de- industrialization and mobilise
its people to fight crime, corruption and various indignities.
In any event, there must be hope for Bihar because, as John
Houlton said a long time ago, Bihar is the heart of India
and India cannot survive a heart by-pass!
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