Bihar's backward march

Bihar's backward march
Arvind N Das

As yet another round of elections looms large on the political horizon, it is important to remember that Bihar is to India what India is to the world. India has set many world records: the largest number of poor people eking out existence in inhuman poverty, the highest number of illiterate people, the greatest number of meetings that Jaswant Singh has had with Strobe Talbott. Similarly, Bihar has set many standards within India: it has a larger number of people under the poverty line than any other state; it has the worst abuses of human rights and it has had George Fernandes politicking there more than anywhere else.

Thus, Indians outside Bihar have little cause to sneer at the nation's second most-populous state: the world looks at India in precisely the same way that India looks at Bihar. Hence, despite the election fatigue that afflicts the citizens during the fiftieth anniversary of the republic, the coming elections in Bihar and in Orissa, Manipur and Haryana too, it must be added are significantand their importance cannot be minimised. The shenanigans of politicians can't hide the fact that the elections in the state will affect not only Bihar but coalition politics in the rest of the country too. After all, Bihar is not a "peripheral entity" which can be ignored.

In politics as with computer-generated cinematic reptiles, size matters. Its sheer size ensures it will have a significant place in the globalised world: it is geographically the size of France and has more people than Germany! Its mineral resources rival those of the European Union and its agricultural as well as human resource potential is immense. It is true that the value of its mineral resources is fast eroding on account of technological changes: for instance, it is now becoming more economical to recycle metals like copper and aluminum than to mine and smelt new ore. Hence many copper, bauxite and mica mines have been closed. Nevertheless, the state still has other mineral resources, including uranium.

In fact, the fires thatrage under the ground in the coal seams of Sindri are evidence of the wasteful and ecologically disastrous, indeed predatory, capitalism that has devastated the state. In this respect, the history of "modern" Bihar does not signify the failure of the socialist state; it signifies the propensity of Third World capitalism mainly to destroy without having the vitality to create anew. Despite the early integration of the commercial resources of the state into the processes of "globalisation" (export of opium to China, Patna rice to Scotland, coal and iron ore outside the state, etc.), the nature of capitalism that developed in Bihar was distorted, dependent on archaic land relations and outmoded cultures.

Capitalism did not bring about "modernity" in Bihar: it merely combined the worst of agrarian premodernity with post-industrial post-modernity!Simultaneously, it also pauperised and brutalised its people. The exploitative utilisation of Bihar as an "internal colony" (through schemes like freight equalisation,low cesses and royalties on its minerals, etc.) are aspects of a distorted economy. And so badly has the system become flawed that it responds neither to human suffering nor to ecological disasters. It appears that it is only the spread of ever-cheaper weapons and class-neutral landmines in Bihar that makes those who rule India wake up to the state's realities.

The tragedy is that almost all the leaders of the state who are engaged in the electoral combat are not in the least bothered about these issues. Their concern is merely with capturing power. It is for this reason that even during the current poll campaigns, there is no mention of such matters; what appears daily in the newspapers are me-rely reports of leaders trying to outsmart one another. Even the astounding levels of corruption, inefficiency and waste institutionalised by the ruling couple does not cause outrage; it is merely subsumed under Surjeet's sophistry. Nor does the series of massacres of the rural poor -- cynically referred to as"Harijan hunting" -- trouble the conscience of the national political parties any more. Instead, the particular bestowing of ministerial positions at the Centre and patronisation of members of a particular caste by the BJP, even at the cost of annoying old loyalists, shows that the party is more interested in wooing the likes of the lawless Ranbir Sena than in really combating "jungle raj". At the same time, the mutually warring rabble that tries to pass off as the NDA has no consistency even with regard to the very shape of the state. The BJP has turned Jharkhand into Vananchal by sheer semantic sleight and wants to carve that out of the state.

Its valued ally, the Samata Party, wants no less than Rs 25,000 crore as compensation and hey presto, Vajpayee announces schemes totalling Rs 26,000 crore without batting an eyelid. It is another matter that mere announcement of schemes or even the laying of foundation stones do not make for either development or the creation of even a moth-eaten Jharkhand.Meanwhile, Laloo Yadav who once championed Jharkhand today vows that Vananchal will only be made over his dead body. It is in the context of such cynical politicking that the people are called upon to exercise their franchise.

There are choices enough before them. In this multi-cornered contest, one corner is occupied by the NDA which has the BJP, Samata, JD (U) and the Bihar People's Party, each more interested in defeating the other while keeping post-poll possibilities of aligning with Laloo Yadav's RJD in the case of the state getting a hung assembly. In the other corner of the electoral ring is the curious grouping of the RJD, the CPM and miscellaneous former prime ministers.

In the third corner stand the Congress, looking lost even before the fight has begun, various Jharkhand factions, a plethora of parties like those "owned" by luminaries like Jagannath Mishra and Ajit Singh. And, in the last corner is the "Fourth Front" comprising the CPI, the CPI (ML-Liberation), the RSP, the Forward Bloc andother elements of the Left forsaken by the CPM. In this context, change in Bihar can only be brought about by those involved in agrarian transformation, ecological protection, industrial renewal and human development. These are the forces which seek to implement land reform and other laws in its countryside, resist deleterious "development" which devastates the environment and habitat of its peoples, struggle to prevent the state's de-industrialisation and mobilise its people to fight crime, corruption and various indignities. In any event, there must be hope for Bihar because, as John Houlton said a long time ago, Bihar is the heart of India and India cannot survive a heart bypass!