“I have voted for Lalu Prasad Yadav for 18 years. But, what have I got?” he said. He recalled tales of pregnant women being taken 12 kms to hospital for delivery, at times on a cot carried by men. The nearby hospital has no doctor, he said.
In sweltering 35 degrees celsius, 16-year-old Arti Kumari limped bare-feet for three kilometres from school in Uksi village in Sheikhpura.
"If I wear chappals I fall,” said the girl afflicted with polio. She wants to be a teacher.
Behind her were a group of girls in the same blue and white uniforms as Arti. All of them aspired to be a doctor, except Julie Kumari who said she wanted to be a singer. All of them walked three kilometres to school each way. They said they were "happy with Nitish Kumar as he had given power and roads”.
A few kilometres away in a village in the Tarapur assembly segment, in the naxal belt of the state, Shailendra Yadav, a truck driver, said his daughter walked eight kms to school. He was angry with JD-U’s sitting MLA Neeta Chaudhary, the wife of the party’s candidate Mewalal Choudhary, and had made up his mind to go with what he called a “BJP wave”. The NDA’s candidate in the seat is state president of Jitan Ram Manjhi’s Hindustani Awam Morcha (HAM) Shakuni Chaudhury.
“I have voted for Lalu Prasad Yadav for 18 years. But, what have I got?” he said. He recalled tales of pregnant women being taken 12 kms to hospital for delivery, at times on a cot carried by men. The nearby hospital has no doctor, he said.
Asked about the naxal problem, he said “we neither benefit nor suffer because of the naxals. What will they take from us poor."
While Bihar appeared largely swayed by caste affiliations, Shailendra’s mood was indicative of a crack in RJD’s Yadav support base, the fallout of which could hurt Nitish Kumar.
Everyone in Bihar will tell you that chief minister Nitish Kumar has “done a lot of development work” but most will add “par Lalu se haat milane se gadbad ho gaya (but things have gone awry because of his joining hands with Lalu Prasad Yadav).”
But, political pundits in Bihar said in three-cornered contest, BJP-led NDA would have been at an advantage given the caste dynamics. The Nitish-Lalu mahagathbandhan is heavily relying on 18 per cent Muslim and 14 per cent Yadav vote, while the NDA is banking on support of upper castes and baniyas, accounting for 23 per cent, and 16 per cent Dalits and mahadalits. The 24 per cent Extremely Backward Class (EBC), which the BJP was hoping to capture, appeared divided.
“With BJP’s social engineering getting on board Paswan and Manjhi, Nitish Kumar would not have been able to take on NDA alone,”said Urmilesh, the author of “Bihar ka Sach”.
In Jamui, from where Ram Vilas Paswan’s son Chirag Paswan is MP, dalits are reluctant to back the NDA’s candidate and sitting MLA Ajay Pratap Singh, the son of former JD-U leader but now key Manjhi aide Narendra Singh. The mahagathbandhan is represented by RJD's Vijay Prakash.
“Look at this road. Nothing has been done in five years.... If there was any other candidate from NDA we would have vote for that person,” said Sakender Paswan in Choudiha village. But, the mahadalits, mostly timid and hesitant to speak, are likely to back Manjhi. The upper castes and those from business community, the BJP’s traditional supporters, want to vote for “change” from the 10-year-old Nitish Kumar regime.
“People have seen jungle raj of Lalu when there was crime and corruption. They want peace and development,” said Narendra Singh, who was coordinating the campaign at the NDA office in Jammui town.
Amesh Mishra, a youth working on education city, said Bihar would benefit if the same NDA government was in power at the Centre and state. Jammui was named as one of the country’s 250 most backward districts in the country by the Panchayati Raj ministry in 2006. As people appreciate the development in Nitish regime, the overwhelming woe is of unemployment.
The BJP is leaving no stone unturned to reinforce apprehensions about fallout of Nitish Kumar joining hands with Lalu Prasad Yadav by emphasising on “jungle raj”. The sentiment has found traction, making it the only blot on an otherwise unblemished image of the chief minister.
Nitish Kumar is trying to counter the campaign by pulling out the National Crime Record Bureau’s crime figures in BJP-ruled states. But, will his development record overcome the fears of those who dread "another jungle raj"?
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