Bhagar Yadav was on the run for three decades; he ultimately surrendered before the Superintendent of Police of Bihar’s West Champaran District, K.S. Anupam. The surrender was not without its drama and make-believe. The drama was provided by his slogan shouting retinue under the leadership of his son, Amar Yadav, the former chairman of the zila parishad. Only two members of his famed gang went to jail with him. The weapons they laid down amounted to only one carbine, one single barrel gun and one rifle.

But the surrender of Bhagar is an epoch-making event for the state administration. If in India the state is considered to be ‘soft’, it used to be considered to be ‘pulp’ in Bihar till recently. Even during the British period, the reach and authority of the state was limited in this region. In the last 60 years, even the remnants of the relatively weak British authoritarian state structure in Bihar had withered away.

In the last two and a half years, however, the authority of the state as an independent agent is being established. The triad of legislature, judiciary and executive has converged to restore the non-existent ‘law’ and elusive ‘order’ in the state. The immediate result of this convergence has been the dramatic increase in the conviction rate where even ‘law makers’ from the ruling party are not spared. The surrender of a person like Bhagar is yet more proof of the growing might of the state.

The phenomenon of Bhagar cannot be understood without reference to his setting. In Bihar as a whole and specifically in Champaran, there was very little by way of concerted social movements to break settled feudal structures. Old Champaran district, the birth place of George Orwell, and now divided between East and West, was home to some of the biggest beneficiaries of the ‘permanent settlement’ (zamindari), like the Bettiah Raj and the Ram Nagar Raj. Leakages from the estate administration could be so staggering that the managers of some of the estates could acquire massive amounts of land and ultimate social hegemony, like the Dewanjee of Sikarpur Estate. The story of crime, brigandage and primitive accumulation was thus embedded in the social structure of the district. Bhagar is a product of this milieu.

... contd.