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High School Students May Change Government in Indian State of 85 million

S K Modi - 1/30/2005

The Indian polity is about as diverse, interesting and intriguing as the socio-cultural conditions in India are. Whether India's sense of pride about the huge diversities is justifiable or not is debatable but the diversities, by themselves, are awesome. In economic terms also, India has a great deal of diversity. Per capita income, house ownership, usage of household appliances like washing machines and refrigerators, population of automobiles and even consumption of food items vary vastly from region to region. It is not merely a question of a society having some very poor and some very rich individuals or families. What distinguishes India is the variations from region to region. For instance, in the prosperous western state of Gujarat, there is one car for every ten families (of five persons each) while in Bihar, perhaps the poorest state in India, there is one car for every 170 families!

In politics, suave and sophisticated performers have been rejected by Indian electorate every now and then. One example is the current prime minister Dr Manmohan Singh, globally recognized as an economic thinker of some substance. He failed to win an election to the Indian parliament in the mid-nineties and that too from a constituency inhabited by literate and affluent families - the southern part of India's capital New Delhi. Prior to that humiliating defeat, Dr Singh had already been India's finance minister for five years and had been widely hailed as the man who not only put India firmly on the path to economic reforms but pulled her out of a state of virtual bankruptcy. In fact, most of the policies initiated by Dr Singh during his tenure as finance minister have remained unchanged since then.

On the other hand, the electorate have voted for illiterate and corrupt politicians who have swindled billions of public money and have displayed scant regard for issues related to social and economic development. The most interesting part is that some of these elements have managed to stay in power for very long periods. One such example is Mr. Lalu Prasad Yadav, who currently heads the nation's railways ministry. To put it in perspective, the Indian Railways is comparable to a transportation company having gross revenues of at least $ 20 billion, in real terms.

Mr. Yadav is in news because his home state Bihar (along with two other, but smaller, states) is going to polls in February. As such, Mr. Yadav heads the railway ministry in the central government at New Delhi while his wife Ms Rabri Devi is the chief minister of Bihar. However, everybody knows that the Bihar government takes all decisions only after approval by Mr. Yadav. Thus, Mr. Yadav effectively holds two posts and only one of the two posts he holds is at stake.

Mr. Lalu Yadav has been a veritable enigma. Ever since he took charge of the railway ministry at New Delhi in May 2004, political scientists in the developed world have been trying to understand his persona and his psyche. According to one report, at least one hundred diplomatic missions and embassies in New Delhi have been seeking information about this man who has defiantly defied all accepted societal norms and has yet dominated the eastern state of Bihar (population 85 million) for fifteen long years. According to one media report, the Harvard University has initiated a sociological study centered on Mr. Yadav's personality.

Born in 1948, Mr. Yadav was first elected to the Indian parliament in 1977. That wasn't much of an achievement since the election that year had marked the end of a brief 19 month period during which fundamental rights of the citizens had been suspended. Millions of people in Bihar, as well as the neighbouring state of Uttar Pradesh, had been sterilized forcibly by the government of the day. There was a huge outpouring of wrath against the then incumbent prime minister Mrs. Indira Gandhi, who personally lost the election to the parliament by a margin of over 100,000 votes.

When the alternative government installed in 1977 started losing credibility after two years of internal squabbles, Mr. Yadav realized that he would be better off in his home state of Bihar. He remained active in state level politics for ten years and finally became Bihar's chief minister in 1990. Since then, there has been no looking back for Mr. Yadav. He has ruled, and milked, Bihar with an iron grip that appears to be loosening only now and that too because of the kidnapping of a 14 year old school boy, rather than the hundreds of millions of dollars that have been allegedly swindled by him and his cohorts. This incident (kidnapping of a school boy) has somehow caught the imagination of the media and the nation and many expect it to be the undoing of Mr. Yadav.

In 1996, Mr. Yadav was accused of having misappropriated over US$ 100 million of public money meant for cattle-feed and was forced to resign from the chief minister ship of Bihar in 1997. But the compulsion to resign arose out of a judicial decree and not because of public protests! He promptly installed his (almost) illiterate wife Ms Rabri Devi as the chief minister of Bihar and started ruling by proxy.

The arrangement was bizarre even by Indian standards. But it has worked. In 2000 Ms Rabri Devi had to face the electorate. Mr. Yadav openly campaigned as the de facto ruler of Bihar and managed to re-install his wife as the chief minister, though his party RJD (Rashtriya Janata Dal) was able to secure only 124 seats in an assembly of 324 while in the dissolved assembly it had 165. Mr. Yadav managed to form an alliance with the Indian National Congress and the people did not mind. In the 2004 national elections, Mr. Yadav continued his alliance with the Indian National Congress and was rewarded with the coveted, and lucrative, ministry of railways.

Bihar's capital Patna is routinely described as the Kidnapping Capital of India. Crime is accepted as a way of life in Bihar. Violence is ignored as routine stuff. In the 1998 parliamentary elections, as many as 44 persons were killed in Bihar in poll-related violence and the figure rose to 60 in the 1999 elections - the parliament elected in 1998 lasted only one year. During the state assembly elections in 2000, the Election Commission of India undertook unprecedented security measures and yet at least 24 persons were killed in poll-related violence. The February 2005 elections are being held in two phases mainly because of security concerns.

The state is rife with poverty. The few schools that are there do not have teachers. Few hospitals are able to hire the requisite number of doctors because hundreds of qualified doctors have migrated to other states because of the perpetual spell of violence that keeps rocking the cities and the towns of the state every now and then. Even good lawyers are not available!

Newspaper editors have often expressed their distress about the crime-ridden state with headlines like "Murder, guns and bombs: its poll time in Bihar!" and "Election violence begins in Bihar" but Mr. Yadav has remained unfazed. He plainly denies any acts of wrong-doing and ascribes all the crime and violence to his opponents.

The man has often been described as a maverick, a fool (literal meaning of the word Lalu is, in fact, "a fool"), a criminal, a buffoon and, by some, as a rustic politician who understands the psyche of his people. How much of a maverick he is became clear when, after assuming charge of the Indian Railways last May, he ordered that all caterers must serve tea only in earthen cups. The logic was that manufacture of earthen cups is much more labor intensive than plastic cups. The fact that used earthen cups could create chaos on railway tracks and platforms was ignored blissfully.

Journalists often accuse Mr. Yadav of having sired as many as nine children when the nation is trying to figure out a way of containing its burgeoning population. Mr. Yadav coolly says it was his way of protesting against the forced sterilization undertaken by the Indira Gandhi regime in 1976! His wife holds the office of the chief minister of Bihar but proudly proclaims that her husband insists upon her cooking his food personally. Mr. Yadav declared his wife competent enough to manage the government of Bihar since she has raised nine children effortlessly and accuses his opponents of insulting every housewife in the country by questioning her political competence. Mr. Yadav is a long story that cannot be told in an article.

Expectations of the opposition BJP (the Bharatiya Janata Party, which ruled New Delhi between 1998 and 2004) and it's ally Janata Dal (United) are running high because of one single incident of kidnapping. A 14 year old boy, Kislay, studying in ninth standard in a relatively classy school, was kidnapped on January 19, 2005. The kidnapping became a mystery since nobody claimed responsibility and no demands were raised on his parents. However, his fellow students decided to take the bull by the horns and came on the streets, demanding that their friend be found by the government. On January 21, the students went to the Patna airport to meet Mr. Lalu Yadav (who continues to be treated as the chief minister of Bihar by all, though it is his wife Rabri Devi who holds the office), where Mr. Yadav was scheduled to board a helicopter for going to an election rally. Mr. Yadav, whose arrogance has been growing because of the continued amazement of the media at his 'longevity,' brusquely refused to meet the students.

The teenage students cried and television cameras were there to record their plight. Later Mr. Yadav went to meet the abducted boy's parents but failed to assuage the hurt sentiments of the students. They have declared their determination to make the government work for safe return of Kislay. As on January 26, 2005, nobody knows whether the hapless boy is alive or not. There is no information, whatsoever, about his well-being, or otherwise. None have claimed responsibility. No demands have been raised on his parents. On top of all this, at least two more students were abducted between 24th and 27th January, 2005.

On January 24, all private schools in Patna remained closed and the students made an appeal to the President of India for intervention, besides starting a relay fast. Students in several other cities, including New Delhi, have also expressed their solidarity with the students of Patna and the issue has become a veritable albatross on the neck of the enigmatic Mr. Yadav.

The gossip mills say Mr. Yadav might spring some surprise at the last moment and may even produce the abducted children. However, his goose appears to have been cooked. Almost the entire literate population of Patna is up in arms against Mr. Lalu Yadav and is demanding that the safety of their children be guaranteed by the state. Most political pundits in India believe Mr. Yadav would be trounced at the elections in February but nobody is willing to put his money on the block - apprehension still looms large on the horizons of Bihar politics. Besides, even if Mr. Yadav's wife gets removed from the chief minister ship, Mr. Yadav himself is quite likely to retain the office of the Minister for Railways at New Delhi.

If the students do succeed in ousting the incumbent government in Bihar, this would perhaps be the first instance of high school students forcing a change of government in a major democracy. It needs to be remembered that population of Bihar is more than UK, Germany or France!