Two parliamentary by-elections, in Vaishali and Madhepura, changed the course of electoral history in Bihar. Way back in 1994, Lovely Anand, wife of Anand Mohan, won the election in Vaishali. Almost a decade later in 2004, Pappu Yadav won the seat vacated by Lalu Prasad Yadav in the latter constituency.

Anand’s victory triggered — as reaction — the formation of one of the broadest social justice coalitions, resulting in a decisive victory for Lalu Yadav in the subsequent assembly election in 1995. In contrast, within a decade of the consolidation of the forces of social justice, Pappu Yadav’s victory in the Madhepura by-election provided the impetus for the firming up of a counter ‘coalition of extremes’ that ousted the RJD government in the 2005 assembly election.

Incidentally, of the two MPs, one fashioned herself as the Bihari variant of the Ku Klux Klan, professing venom and hate against the plebian classes; the other, with his plethora of criminal activities, not only sullied the image of the social justice movement in the state but also gave an entirely different meaning to it. Both these contrasting ‘icons’ of Bihar’s politics were convicted — one is facing the death sentence and the other a life sentence — as soon as the state machinery abandoned its earlier complacence in enforcing the rule of law.

The grammar of politics is changing in Bihar. No election hereafter cannot be fought on the basis of the earlier benchmarks of muscle and firepower. The most under-governed and underdeveloped state of the country, for the first time after -Independence, is working out a new development architecture.

... contd.