Columns: Fifth Column

Columns

India Today, March 22, 1999
March 22, 1999

FIFTH COLUMN
Not Rabri Again

Mr and Mrs Laloo are free to traumatise Bihar once more.

By Tavleen Singh

In the past week, I have watched Laloo Yadav on television nearly every day. On the day that President's rule was revoked in Bihar, I even saw a guest appearance by Mrs Laloo. She is never going to get more than a guest appearance. But if Laloo ever needs a job he should look for one in television. He is a superb performer and would be much more entertaining as a talk-show host than belligerent old T.N. Seshan or "intellectual" Chandra Shekhar. Or for that matter any of the former politicians and bureaucrats who move so easily from "serving the country" to the infotainment industry.

But while I tilt my hat to Laloo the entertainer, I have to add that his role was made a lot easier by the fact that not a single journalist asked him the questions he really needs to answer. Let me give you a few examples. Why have massacres by Bihar's multitudinous caste armies nearly doubled since he became chief minister in 1990? In the 20 years before that, 291 people were killed in 24 massacres. In the 10 years that Mr and Mrs Laloo have ruled, nearly 400 people have been killed in 35 incidents. Thirteen of these occurred after Laloo so graciously handed over power to his semi-literate wife.

There are other questions. Why does Bihar continue to have the lowest rate of economic growth in the country? Why does it continue to have the lowest literacy rates? Why is it going to take nearly half of the next century before population control measures have full effect?

Laloo is very good at avoiding questions like these. Actually, he has a standard answer -- that the Centre has impoverished Bihar by not giving it sufficient royalty for its mineral resources. Having said that, he usually goes into a long polemical monologue about how Bihar is the best state in the world and if it has a bad name, it is only because everyone wants to malign it.

If pressed further he will add that the whole thing is a plot by "communal forces" who want to destroy him because he is such a shining example of secularism. The trouble isn't so much with what he says as with the questions we do not ask. Not just us in the media but even those who sit in high office in Delhi and decide which state needs President's rule and which does not. While defending the decision to dismiss Mrs Laloo's government, for instance, why didn't the Central government consider it necessary to point out that its own schemes for Dalits and tribals in the state were not implemented properly.

Laloo has magnanimously announced that 400 acres will be distributed to Dalits in the Jehanabad district in the next couple of weeks. Why does nobody point out this is the sort of largesse that should have become outdated with feudalism and has nothing to do with modern governance?

It is this kind of governance, in fact, that has reduced Bihar from being the best administered state when the British left to the worst today. This decline cannot be blamed entirely on Mr and Mrs Laloo. But having ruled for 10 years, virtually as king and queen, they have to shoulder some of the blame. Surely the very appointment of Rabri Devi as Laloo Yadav's proxy chief minister is in itself proof that there has been something seriously wrong with the manner in which our poorest state has been governed.

Rabri, as anyone could have told from watching even her guest appearance on television, is totally incapable of understanding the basics of governance. Having had the dubious pleasure of interviewing her for my television programme, I can say with authority that she is completely inarticulate on economic and political matters. She has been taught to mouth a few slogans about "working for the poor" and that is about the limit of her comprehension of political science and economics.

She resents being asked how she feels about her husband having handed power to her in the way he did. "It's not my husband who gave me power," she told me angrily, "but the MLAs." Sure, at a price. In her previous government every other MLA was a minister. Her government was not so much a government as a mockery. Yet her return to power has been facilitated not just by the Congress -- which first announced she had no right to rule -- but even by our Marxist parties and "other secular forces" as Laloo so proudly pronounced.

Have they no shame? President's rule has been invoked more than 100 times but almost never before have we seen such a fuss about it. Could it be because our "secular forces" are more interested in playing politics than in bringing a semblance of governance to our least governed state?

If ever there was a fit case for dismissing a state government it was in Bihar. If the reinstatement of Rabri looks like a slap on the face of Atal Bihari Vajpayee's government, the prime minister has only himself to blame. Unlike Laloo, he has not yet understood the importance of television in today's politics.

Had he understood this, he would have gone on national television the day before President's rule was revoked -- and told people exactly what had happened. He should have explained, with that eloquence he is so famous for, exactly how bad the situation in Bihar is. He should have told us why his government felt that President's rule was the only option. Then, he should have made a big point of mentioning that it was only because of a last minute betrayal by the Congress that things had gone awry.

Instead we had Vajpayee speaking on women's rights. While the BJP's spokesmen, inarticulate and camera-unfriendly, were left to take on the very telegenic Laloo.

Issue Contents | Write to us | Subscriptions | Syndication