Nitish Kumar and the Rise of Bihar , livre ebook

ARUN SINHA
Nitish Kumar and the Rise of Bihar
Contents
Dedication
Map
Introduction
PART I: ON A SEA OF TURMOIL
1. The Second Coming
2. The Inheritance
3. Political Beginnings
4. The Grind
5. Repeated Failures
6. The Ladder to Power
7. The Rebellion
8. Building an Alternative
9. The Road to Victory
PART II: REINVENTING BIHAR
10. Government at the Doorstep
11. Green and Not So Green
12. Fast and Slow Lanes
13. Restoring Bihari Pride
14. Success as a Journey
Illustrations
Selected Bibliography
Notes
Acknowledgements
Copyright Page
To my mother
BIHAR

The international boundaries on the maps of India are neither purported to be correct nor authentic by Survey of India directives.
Introduction
I am emotionally attached to Bihar because it is not only my land of birth and education but also the land of my explorations as a journalist. My motherland constantly, untiringly, stimulatingly nourishes me and amazes me with unorthodox wisdoms. To many it looks like a chaotic land, but that is because too many revolutions are taking place, the old is giving place to the new and the society is not stabilized. There is chaos because to the people living in a state of subjection for centuries the dream of walking free with their heads held high and sharing existence as equals no longer seems distant and impossible.
Lalu Prasad emerged because large sections of the oppressed majority wanted a hero who could break the dominance of the few and help them grow economically for them to be able to challenge their sway on their own. But he botched the historic opportunity, leaving Bihar in disarray and desolation and Biharis drowned in shame.
But again, deep within the society, the dynamics of discontent never ceased to operate. Dreams did not die. A general sentiment grew that regardless of social station Biharis could not progress unless Bihar was developed. A popular search began for a leader who could make this possible. But the backward sections of society would not trust anyone from the upper castes. He could do things to re-establish and perpetuate upper-caste dominance. That was how Nitish Kumar qualified and was chosen.
A few years into his first term the media started talking of a turnaround . Nitish Kumar had brought Bihar back from the dead. I felt happy for my motherland and was glad for Nitish who was my classmate at the Bihar College of Engineering and a very intimate friend. That was when the thought of this book first came to me. But, simultaneously, a doubt arose in my mind that the objectivity of the book could be compromised by my closeness to him. It took quite a while for me to resolve the conflict in favour of professional integrity. Nitish separates the professional from the personal. I also decided not to mix the two.
This is an unconventional biography. It is a story of Nitish Kumar interwoven with the story of contemporary Bihar. There are slices of Lalu s story too, without which the stories of Nitish and Bihar would not be complete. However, the book essentially attempts to tell the story of Nitish s life and politics, where he succeeded, where he failed, of his accomplishments together with the mistakes and compromises he made, of his struggles and defeats and how he managed both.
Much of the material in the book is based on interviews with political leaders and workers, state government officials and people from various classes of society, articulate and not so articulate, in the towns and villages of Bihar conducted over a period of eight years. Views on specific issues were gathered with the help of research teams through structured questionnaires. Books on Bihar s contemporary social and political movements and trends, such as backward classes movements and electoral politics, are but few, so as secondary sources I had to often depend on micro studies, mostly PhD theses published as books. A select bibliography is provided at the end of the book.
For Nitish s personal and professional accounts I interviewed him several times over the past two years and was able to cross-check and enrich them with materials gathered in conversations with politicians who were associated with him at one time or another, journalists, friends and family members. Nitish s late mother, brother, sisters and close relations and residents of Bakhtiyarpur and Kalyanbigha helped me a good deal in knowing about his childhood and growing-up years.
I
On a Sea of Turmoil
1. The Second Coming
The counting of votes for the Bihar Assembly results started at eight in the morning on 24 November 2010. At 1 Anne Marg-Chief Minister Nitish Kumar s official residence in the exclusive precinct of white bungalows the British had built for their top officers between the Governor s House and the Secretariat in western Patna-the mood was buoyant and jovial but not without the nagging apprehension of the wild beast that ballot boxes quite often produced.
Media exit polls had forecast an absolute majority for Nitish, with pollsters differing only on numbers. Yet, the same media before the elections had prophesied a hung Assembly.
When we met Nitish at our common friend Kaushal s son s engagement in Mumbai three days before the day of counting, everybody expressed joy over the results foretold , but he wouldn t accept congratulations from anyone. We put it to his ability to be calm to the point of stolidity: he would never, unlike any of us friends, yell, jump up and punch the air at his moments of triumph.
However, when we were alone in his suite, and I told him about the exit polls and how a senior journalist covering elections had junked all crystal-gazing by the media and told me two weeks before the polling ended- Nitish will get 200 seats, the others will have to fight for a share in the remaining 43. It s going to be a tsunami. People are not telling anyone, the media is not getting the feel -I could notice Nitish s face glisten with pleasure. Yeh kaam ka asar hai (It s a reward for work), he said.
But the next moment the glow on his face disappeared. He began to look concerned. It s a very huge responsibility. I was going around asking people to give me five more years, but I was also asking myself, Do I have the energy and capability to deliver what I am promising them? Will I be able to transform the system?
Heaving a sigh he said, But then, I have to first be sure if people are giving me another tenure. I nurtured a tree. Whether it s going to bear fruits or not depends on nature s mood. The stoical posture, the impassivity, had returned.
Instructions had been passed on to the security men in grey safari outside 1 Anne Marg not to stop any party men or others who wished to come in to congratulate the sahib on the day of counting. At the same time, inside the two-storeyed bungalow facing big manicured lawns edged with flower plants, its exterior and rooms humble, unadorned and functional just as originally designed in the 1910s, everyone sported a little swagger of certainty but dropped it in Nitish s presence to assume the leader s monkish attitude.
Television sets were on: in Nitish s secretary Chanchal Kumar s room on the ground floor, in CM s chamber opposite it, and upstairs where Nitish s family lived. Everybody was receiving the latest news from sources of their own; every piece was shared with others and cheered or waved away for being stale or inauthentic.
Nearly every result was going in favour of Nitish s party, the Janata Dal (United). The seats not contested by it were going to its ally, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP). The leader of the Opposition, Rabri Devi-who had never lost an election since her husband, Rashtriya Janata Dal (RJD) president and Gharibon ka Masiha [Messiah of the Poor] Lalu Prasad had installed her as chief minister in 1997-was on the verge of losing by several thousand votes in both the Sonepur and Raghopur constituencies. I had got some sense of it when I visited Raghopur during the campaign. I had heard the Yadavs-Lalu s caste-men, the pillars of his electoral edifice-say the Nitish regime was good because loot-maar (seizing things by force) had stopped and the bazaar remained open till late in the evening.
All the four close relations (two brothers, two sons-in-law) of Ram Vilas Paswan, the leader of the RJD s ally, Lok Janshakti Party (LJP), were trailing far behind. The state Congress party president Mehboob Ali Qaiser and the ex-leader of Congress Legislature Party, Prakash Ram, were facing defeat.
Within a few hours, the picture was clear. The lawns were swarmed with JD(U) officials, workers, supporters. Truckloads of laddoos started arriving. In that atmosphere of jubilation, media persons and TV cameramen were barely noticed and were shoved about. Everyone waited with garlands, bouquets, red clay powder to congratulate the conqueror.
Inside the bungalow Chanchal Kumar s room, the waiting lounge next to it and the passages were crowded with Nitish s aides, friends, senior party men and bureaucrats. Nitish s aides were amused to see among the senior civil and police officers streaming in to compliment him a few from the bunch who were suspected to be hatching plots to deny Nitish a second tenure. The bunch allegedly operated in collusion with Lallan Singh, Nitish s overambitious shadow who had turned hostile to him before the elections, and Congress election machinery manipulators in Delhi; Lallan in his heyday had had them placed in key positions. They were so effective in instilling fear in the top rungs of the civil service and the police that the latter would not even resist unwarranted transfers of officers by election authorities based on fallacious complaints. At the end of it, the bunch was sure of the success of their plan. They even wagered bets on the number by which Nitish would miss a majority.
Among the first to congratulate Nitish was Union Home Minister P. Chidambaram. He was the first to congratulate me but h