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The election circus is over. Now
let's get down to business. Bihar's dispossessed do not want to survive
on cultural subsidy alone, writes Shaibal
Gupta
 The
outcome of the present assembly election in Bihar can be analysed from
two angles - one statistical and the other social. From the statistical
point of view, the electoral outcome of Laloo Prasad's rout was expected,
as the UPA in the state was fractured, unlike in the 2004 parliamentary
election. If it were united, its performance would have probably been
much better. After all, the combined vote share of the UPA constituents
(RJD, LJP, Congress, CPI (M), CPI) in the present election is 44.4 percent,
which is about 9 percentage points higher than that of the NDA (35.2
per cent).
Interestingly, the NDA in the last parliamentary election got a higher
vote share of 36.9 per cent, yet it lost the parliamentary election
decisively. The vote share of RJD has declined by only 1.03 per cent
since the last February election, although it contested 40 less seats
this time and that of Congress actually increased by half a percentage
point even though it contested 39 less seats this time. In case of LJP,
inspite of the defection of 18 MLAs from its rank since the February
election, its vote share declined by only 1.8 percentage points. Incidentally
RJD still has the largest individual vote share in Bihar. The increase
in the vote share of NDA by about 10 per centage points can be explained
mainly in terms of a gain of 7.5 per cent vote share of the independent
candidates and other parties. So the statistical analysis of electoral
outcome may not take us far in explaining any expansion or shrinkage
of the 'social base' of the respective fronts in Bihar since the last
parliamentary or the assembly election in February.
As regards the social implication of the outcome of the present election,
although Laloo Prasad is now routed, the components of the new power
structure may not necessarily imply a paradigm shift in the state's
social configuration. In the last one-and-half decades, Bihar had gone
out of the national political trajectory. The earlier ruling forces,
essentially representing a wholly new social configuration, were unrecognisable
at the national level. This non-recognition stemmed from the fact that
the new forces, socially marginalised and outside the market structure,
had never played a critical role in the electoral destiny of the nation.
Even though the adult franchise was introduced way back in 1952 in India,
the setting of the electoral agenda was always done by the class who
regulated the market behavior and investment destinations. Market was
that strong even in those days when the 'state' was supposed to be at
the 'commanding height' in the matters of economic development. After
the 'green revolution', the social base of the agenda setters did become
wider, but it still excluded by conscious design those outside the pale
of market structure. The rich farmers now became the partner of the
industrialists, but they were not strong enough to change the adverse
terms of trade between the agriculture and industry.
Nevertheless, with the agro-based entrepreneurs coming to the political
centre stage, the old power bastion got much weakened, because the agro-based
entrepreneurs were very different from the traditional elites in many
respects including their caste background. Thus, in many places, old
power structures started co-opting the new social forces and, in the
process reinvented their identity. Most of the north Indian states followed
this path of social and political co-option.
Bihar was possibly the only state in the country where the traditional
elite kept a distance from the emerging agro-entrepreneurs. The Congress
Party in Bihar ignored the backward upsurge following the green revolution
and no effort was made to co-opt the new class. Such cooption was difficult
in Bihar because thee emerging classes or social segments had independent
well-articulated organic political organisations, thanks to a long struggle
for social justice since the 30s, when Triveni Sangh was organised.
The social movement thereafter had carried that agenda further till
the seventies. Even the tenant section of the traditional elite, after
the abolition of the 'Permanent Settlement' in 1948, had played an equally
important role in laying the foundation of agricultural capitalism.
In fact, the rent seeking traditional elites were gradually marginalised,
both economically and politically, and replaced by more dynamic elements
from among the tenant section. Thus the borderline between the tenant
section of the traditional elite and the backward agro-capitalists became
increasingly thin. They together brought about the substantial agricultural
growth, even though Bihar did not witness the same level of tenurial
reform, which West Bengal had introduced.
Consequently, the 70s and 80s witnessed increasing amount of class consolidation,
both amongst the haves and have-nots, cutting across caste division.
With the onset of the reform in the 90s, the process of class consolidation
could have acquired more teeth, but after the installation of V P Singh's
government in the center in the late eighties and the introduction of
Mandal Commission, there was a significant change in the social positioning
of the different political parties. In this sequence, when Laloo Prasad
was installed as the Chief Minister of Bihar in 1990, it was not only
the first authentic non-Congress government in the state, it also signaled
a major paradigm shift in the power structure of Bihar in favour of
the subaltern.
Significantly, Nitish Kumar was also one of the co-architects in the
installation of Laloo Prasad and the concomitant paradigm shift in power
structure. The shift in the social base of power structure was so unsettling
and fundamental that Laloo Prasad and Nitish Kumar duo were contemptuously
referred by the traditional elites as 'Ranga and Billa' of Bihar politics.
The Mandal Commission and the management of the communal conflagrations
later made, the political position to Laloo Prasad even more enviable.
But Laloo Prasad's larger-than-life image and the fracture in the social
justice rank, initially led by Nitish Kumar, ultimately proved the undoing
for Janta Dal earlier and RJD later. The social justice platform on
which had assembled the broadest coalition of different sections of
the poor, even eclipsing the long entrenched communist movement in Bihar,
now lay in disarray. Unlike the general impression, the bedrock of this
coalition was not based on Yadav and Muslim unity, but rather on the
convergence of the poor in general, irrespective of caste. Disproportionate
visibility of Yadav and Muslim in the coalition stemmed from the fact
that they are large in number and majority of them are poor. It is thus
not surprising that the better off and educated sections among the rank
of Kurmis and the Yadav, had gone out of this coalition under the leadership
of Nitish Kumar earlier and Sharad Yadav later. If Laloo Prasad could
not dislodge Sharad Yadav in Madhepura or Nitish Kumar in Nalanda, it
was because Yadavs in Madhepura and Kurmis in Nalanda are essentially
traditional elite as these are the only two geographical enclaves in
Bihar, where permanent land settlement was done with the backward elite.
After the elite revolt within the backward community, the main architect
of the 'green revolution', subaltern of the subaltern like Annexure
I castes in Bihar also got alienated from the initial social justice
coalition, because all these social consolidation brought about so diligently
was not followed by any economic foundation. Over and above, the capture
of political power by the subaltern was not followed by the building
of any organisational structure which act not only as an electoral shock
absorber but as an interface beween the party and the masses. In its
absence, the party is forced to co-opt the criminal elements to act
as a substitute for party workers. Finally, the substantial decline
of RJD's vote share between 2000 and 2005 clearly points to the disenchantment
of the poor with Laloo Prasad's limited vision of social justice where
economic enabling did not follow social empowerment.
Thus the victory of Nitish Kumar has to be understood in terms of either
co-option of the traditional elites with one section of the subaltern
rank, or scripting of a multi-class and caste agenda of Bihari subnationalism.
In any case, the subalterns in Bihar are no longer ready to survive
on the cultural subsidy alone, like folk or local dialect. They would
now like to have some substantive gains of development. With the steady
decline of the state, the strategy of positive discrimination has its
own limit now.
It appears that the new government has two options. It could either
initiate a bottom-up process of development starting from tenurial reform.
The recent Jehanabad incident only underlines how critical is this problem.
It is a difficult task, but the other option is even more difficult,
where the top-down approach of massive investment in infrastructure
and industries has to be arranged, where market is abysmally small.
It is to be seen how Nitish Kumar, with such a low public finance base,
can choreograph the 'coalition of the extremes' in the social firmament
of Bihar.
Dr.
Shaibal Gupta*
Member Secretary,
Asian Development Research Institute (ADRI)
Patna
E-mail : shaibalgupta@yahoo.co.uk
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