A few days before Nitish Kumar completed one year as chief minister of Bihar, a routine horse-trading took place in Sonepur, a sub-divisional town of Bihar famous for its mega annual cattle fair. The horse was traded between former chief minister Lalu Prasad Yadav and Anant Singh, a JD(U) MLA in the Bihar Assembly. The transaction was, however, not direct; an insignificant intermediary was positioned in between.

This apparently innocuous transaction did not go unnoticed. It got front-page coverage in the print media and huge footage on television. Never during the period of his electoral invincibility had Lalu Prasad Yadav’s consciously crafted social construct appeared to be in such disarray as after this transaction. The triumphant ascendance of Anant Singh, former terror and now law-maker, on the saddle of Lalu’s horse, with elan and nonchalance, possibly indicated a reversal of the social empowerment agenda that was associated with the former owner of the horse. He did not stop at only mounting the saddle, but declared himself to be the present ‘raja’ who had vanquished the earlier ‘raja’ in an open market transaction.

It is tragic that Lalu Yadav, who emerged on the national firmament riding a ‘social justice’ agenda co-scripted by Nitish Kumar, diluted its core thrust over the years. He began imbibing all the symbols of neo-feudal authority, be it in body language or in his acquisition of cattles and horses. It is a tragic irony for the ‘social justice’ movement in the Hindi heartland that its leaders and icons, with few exceptions, either get co-opted by the feudal order or themselves embrace its ethos. This indicates a lack of confidence and self-esteem. In contrast, the anti-Brahmin movements in south and western India not only ensured subaltern empowerment but threw up alternative developmental models and entrepreneurs from marginal social stock.

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