 |
 |
|
| Vol. 4, Issue 5 May 2012 |
|
|
|
| |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Perspectives |
|
|
Politics |
Bihar: Entering the Governance Era?
|
| Why the Bihar elections will have nationwide repercussions |
|
Published : 1 November 2010 |
| |
|
|
AFTAB ALAM SIDDIQUI / AP PHOTO |
|
| The champions of caste politics in Bihar, Nitish Kumar, Ram Vilas Paswan and Lalu Prasad
Yadav, inaugurating a fertiliser plant in Bihar in 2008.
|
|
|
|
| T |
HE ONGOING ELECTIONS IN BIHAR will not only
give the state a new government or re-elect the
same one: these elections will have national consequences
on two counts. |
First, they’ll reflect—or not—a less caste and community-based
brand of politics which has developed in this state
at the expense of issue-based politics. Second, it will have
implications for all the non-regional parties in the fray, the
Congress, the BSP, and even more importantly, the BJP.
The fiasco surrounding the Commonwealth Games has
made the demand for good governance more pressing than
ever before in India. A country claiming to be an emerging
power with the same potential as China cannot resign itself
to being ruled by Kalmadi and Co. This commonplace assessment leads to another one: the world’s largest democracy
cannot resign itself to have citizens voting for politicians of
their caste when they go to the polls. Hence the importance
of Bihar—the crucible state of caste politics. The socialist
party, the most caste-oriented after the Ambedkarites, was
born in Bihar and developed there as the first state party
asking for caste-based quotas. More importantly, Bihar’s social
conflicts have resulted in Jati Senas, caste militias with
no equivalent in the rest of India. If a state whose per capita
income is one of the lowest within India voted on the basis
of development issues, India could claim that all hope is not
lost for a brand of politics based on citizenship.
Some people argued last year that when the coalition between
the JD(U) and the BJP scored a stunning victory at
2009’s general elections in Bihar—taking 32 Lok Sabha seats
to the paltry four won by the rival Rashtriya Janata Dal-Lok
Janashakti Party—it was thanks to the style of the state’s
popular chief minister, Nitish Kumar. The JD(U) leader, regarded
as a ‘clean’ CM, was seen as having turned things
around after taking over from Lalu Prasad Yadav’s RJD government.
Kumar implemented a developmental agenda that
provided basic amenities like water and electricity to the
people, as well as controlling crime.
But the JD(U)-BJP victory in
2009 was not primarily due to
Kumar’s development agenda:
the alliance actually had its greatest
successes among castes and
communities who had derived
specific benefits from its policies.
Most Dalits deserted the LJP
and rallied to the JD(U)-BJP alliance,
with the exception of the
Dusadhs, who remained followers
of the LJP leader Ram Vilas
Paswan, himself a Dusadh. This
was largely due to Kumar’s measures
in favour of those he called
the Mahadalits: a group of Scheduled
Castes other than the Dusadhs
and the Chamars/Jatavs.
Similarly, the Bihar government
invented a new category of ‘backward
Muslims,’ the Pasmanda—
mostly weavers and dhobis—for whom it devised a reservation policy in the local bodies and
to whom it provided educational scholarships. Even more
specifically, Kumar offered a monthly pension of 2,500
rupees to the Muslim victims of the 1989 Bhalgalpur riots
and their descendants (riots in which 1,000 people—mostly
Muslims—died in not only the most deadly communal episode
of the Ayodhya movement, but one the most violent
upheavals since partition.) Partly as a result of this move,
the RJD–LJP alliance, which took 79 percent of the Muslim
vote in the 2004 general elections, retained less than a third
of Muslim voters in 2009 according to the CSDS polls.
The fact that policy did not matter as much as vote bank
politics is hardly surprising given the fact that general elections
are not primarily intended to reward or punish Chief
Ministers, in contrast to state elections. The coming elections
will be interesting for precisely this reason. Will the
voters decide to support or to sanction the outgoing CM
because of his policies, independently of their caste and
community?
The second national-level consequence has to do with
the part non-regional parties will play. Over the last 15
years Bihar politics has been dominated by two parties, the
RJD—whose leader, Lalu Prasad Yadav has been around for
even more: 20 years, including 15 years in office (directly
or indirectly)—and the JD(U), whose leader, Nitish Kumar,
was once an ally of Lalu Prasad, when OBC politics, after
Mandal, made the Yadav/Kurmi coalition possible. But national
parties are also involved, be they in competition with
regional parties or allied with them.
| | | |
| |
|
|
|
|
Readers' Comments |
Total Comments
|
|
rekha
3 November 2011
12:56 PM
|
|
when we will have a look on the political history of Bihar or utter pradesh , parties mainly doing politics making caste as their political agend can be easily seen. they do not think about the state BIHAR, as a whole but they search a oppurtunity to please some particular caste, whether it is alliance of JDU-BJP or of the parties making caste equations like MYE?(muslim +yadav). but this caste based politics will not lead BIHAR to the road of development, but caste based land disputes and carnages will spread its legs in the whole state.
|
|
|
|
| 1 |
|