Azad
The beauty of Bihar is that even though it is not the most developed state of India, people are exceptionally well versed with politics. Sit on any local or highway tea stall and you will find it abuzz with politics. Information like local MLAs, who won, who lost, who jumped ship to other party, complex caste equations and national politics are on the tip of any local’s hands. Even the poorest of poor knows it. The idealist and Bihari in me attributes this peculiar phenomenon to the fact that Bihar is the birthplace of democracy. The first question then that comes to mind is, why! Why is Bihar so underdeveloped despite being cradle of Indian politics? I am a great believer in history. It is my opinion that without studying history, one cannot put things in context.
Numerous rivers like Ganga, Kosi, Kamla and Gandak make Bihar an exceptionally fertile place. From thousands of years, these rivers have brought in alluvial soil to the joy and sorrow of farmers. East India company noticed that as well. For them, one of the most precious commodities to sell was Indigo or Neel. It was used to make dye. It was so valuable in the 18th century that it was also called “Blue gold”. And India, like many other things, was the prime supplier for Britain. By 1810, 95% of the Indigo imported in Britain was Indian. Bihar became the center of Indigo production in British scheme of things. British indigo concerns mushroomed in the Muzaffarpur district towards the end of the eighteenth century, while in Darbhanga, Champaran, and Chhapra the first factories were erected at the beginning of the nineteenth century. More and more area was appropriated for indigo cultivation as it was a very successful cash rich business. Permanent settlement and Bengal tenancy acts had given Zamindars indiscriminate powers to exploit labour and possess land. The zamindars and planters let out the land to the tenants on a fixed rental with the provision that each of them would cultivate indigo on 3/20th of the land given to him. This was called ‘Tinkathiya’. The cultivation of this crop required hard labour and it also exhausted the soil. The indigo crop was sold at a nominal price to the planter. In addition, a class divide was created by unnecessary and inhumane laws. No Indian, whatever his status, could ride a horse or hold an umbrella in the presence of a European planter. By the time Germans invented synthetic indigo and natural indigo industry in India collapsed, zamindars had become immensely powerful and Bihar had already suffered six massive famines. People were left landless, poor, hungry, illiterate and without much hope. And this condition stayed till independence. And sadly, it remained so even after independence.
Post Independence, India could not get rid of British education system for numerous reasons. Class divide was steep and a rigid caste system had taken root in society in last few hundred years. Land reforms failed too because the politicians and bureaucrats who were to implement such reforms came from the zamindari class and thus ensured that such reforms were never really implemented on the ground. People who had to take poor out of the ditch, knowing or unknowingly, helped them stay there. People wanted rapid development after independence as Britishers were thought to be the root of all evils. Once they were gone and development was slow to reach, discontent started simmering. Peasants and landless labour started coming under the influence of Far Left ideology and later Naxalism as their patience started weaning. Soon they started raiding the affluent land owners. Traditionally, zamindars have always had a set of pehelwans to protect their assets. But now, they too started forming armed militia whose sole motive was to not let the lower castes rear their heads. What were the successive congress lead state governments doing? Your guess is as good as mine.
Private armies of Bihar. Source- satp.org
Somewhere in between this social churning, Nehru govt. decided to borrow “Freight Equalisation Policy” from the soviets. Under this policy, one could set up industry wherever he wanted across the country and govt. would subsidize the transport cost of raw materials. This meant that everybody wanted to set up his factory in the plains or near the coast from where transportation of goods would be easier. Bihar was one of the states which lost its competitive edge despite having huge mineral and ore deposits. There was no incentive for industrialists to come to Bihar anymore. This was not the case in pre independence era when industrialists like Tata and Birla had to set up their factories in Bihar and Bengal to use these resources. This policy was in force till 1993. And by then it was too late.
Bihar also paid the price of being idealistic to a certain extent. It is well known that when Indira Gandhi suffocated India with corruption and later clamped down with Emergency, it was Bihar which first came out in defiance of this dictatorship. Youth of Bihar came out on streets to protest. Colleges were shut down and people from across the state, and later country, reached Gandhi Maidan in Patna for JP’s rally. It was under his guidance that India got her first non-congress govt. in center. But in this process, on his call, many students came out of colleges and schools, lost a minimum of two years in disruptions and worse, got leaders who later embroiled themselves in casteist politics. Lalu Yadav had taken a back dated admission to be the president of Patna university student’s union. Nitish Kumar was not in the forefront but played a pivotal role in deciding the direction of the movement. Sushil Modi was from the Sangh background and jailed for months due to his organisational activities. What happened then?
JP movement in its heart was a student’s movement which was later turned into a political movement with Janta Party as its chariot. But JP passed away in 1979. The Janta coalition had already started developing fault lines. Soon these erstwhile student leaders had to scramble to prepare whatever base they could. And they found respite in going back to caste based politics which was tried and tested in the Indian arena. They also lacked an organisational structure which they compensated by recruiting goons and criminals. This was not a new phenomenon. Sanjay Gandhi inflated the numbers in his Youth congress with dubious elements just so that he could have a parallel organisation to Congress. More recently, Aam Aadmi Party adopted the same tactic with 23 out of its 67 MLAs having a criminal case against them. This is the deal with the devil which most of the politicians sooner or later make. You get power, money and some semblance of organisation but you have to pay in ideology, corruption and by getting sidetracked of the developmental agenda. Throughout the 80’s, Bihar was preparing itself for a skydive without parachute. Till 1990, one could still compare Bihar on the various developmental parameters with other states. But in 1990, Bihar nosedived.
Lalu Yadav came to power. He decided time was ripe to pluck the fruit. While India was seeing its first major growth spurt, Bihar’s economy was shrinking. The criminals who had helped him reach this pinnacle, wanted to cash in now. Lalu’s predecessors were by no means honest and good but such was the zealousness of his cause that they were all left behind in the race. When other parts of the nation were busy in using liberalization for setting up new industries, we in Bihar were seeing an altogether different kind of industry on the rise – Kidnapping industry. People who built their homes, did not get it painted from the outside, just to stop any rumours of affluence doing rounds. And if this was not enough, Lalu installed his largely illiterate wife Rabri Devi as CM when he was accused in fodder scam. Lalu’s daughter named Misa (after Maintenance of Internal security act) and her wedding were the talk of town in 1999 where the state bore all expenses. 2 people in my immediate friend circle have faced kidnapping attempts. All this while living in Patna, the state capital. God help you if you lived in the internal areas. Electricity was a rarity and law and order was a novelty. Men of marriageable age started getting kidnapped to be forcefully wed. This phenomenon was known as “pakadua shaadi”. Women were being harassed at will. CM’s kith and kin were the law. For instance, an IAS officer’s wife was gang-raped for 2 years and Lalu Yadav was accused of shielding culprits in the case but nothing happened about it; when 2 corpses were found in a car parked in MLA quarter’s garrage and Sadhu Yadav being the MLA then decided not to cooperate with police and that was that.
As a result of these few decades of infighting, there are no centers of higher education of any repute left in Bihar. Industry is still next to nonexistent and people want better infrastructure. If you are a Bihari and you have survived the Bihar of 90’s, you can live anywhere in the country. Atrocities faced by Biharis in those 15 years can fill many such articles. But I shall leave it here for the time being.
The next govt. came like a whiff of fresh air but asking the decadence of last century to be reversed was too much. Youth of Bihar wanted overall development and next govt. realised this. They tried to bring developmental agenda to the forefront and yet played the caste card very intelligently. You have already been bombarded with stories of what happened next and I shall not bore you with Nitish BJP split and its details.
A lot of work needs to be done in very little time. Situation is grim and as a slightly older Bihari, I would like to advice my younger friends to vote for the right candidate.
