Back on track

Despite being pulled up by the Election Commission for distributing money among his votebank, Lalu Prasad Yadav's election campaign in Bihar is going strong and his future seems assured

Ranjit Bhushan Patna

With less than three months to go for the Bihar Assembly elections, Union Railway Minister and chief of the Rashtriya Janata Dal (RJD), Lalu Prasad Yadav, is sitting ebullient and pretty. Notwithstanding his maladroit cash-disbursing act near Patna that got him into the bad books of the Election Commission, Lalu has good reasons to be confident: on the eve of his party's third attempt to form a government, his main rivals are in disarray; his votebank appears more or less behind him; his charisma is intact. The opposition votebank is fragmented far more than it was during the previous Lok Sabha elections. And, after two terms in office, the RJD is well in control of the state administration. The possibility that has left the realm of the unthinkable is that of Lalu's potential as prime minister — the first from the hotbed of anarchism, Bihar.

Lalu knows that upward mobility in national politics is entirely dependent on his keeping his pocket borough intact. His experience of the 1997 general elections, when the RJD and its allies were routed by the erstwhile National Democratic Alliance (NDA), has made him wise enough not to consider taking anything for granted. His advantage is that not a single opposition politico has honed his wiles in Bihar for a very long time. Most of them migrated to national politics. They are, almost without exception, Central leaders. Lalu spends a lot of time in Patna, in close minute-to-minute contact with his people.

Among his competitors, Nitish Kumar is a powerful Other Backward Castes (OBC) politician; archrival Ram Vilas Paswan is an influential Dalit leader; the BJP's lone whimper in the state, Sushil Modi, is now a Lok Sabha Member of Parliament (MP). Shatrughan "Shotgun" Sinha, the Bollywood exile and Rajya Sabha MP who could potentially pose a threat to Lalu, has no local backing, either by his own party, the BJP, or by socialist allies from the Janata Dal (United). United, they had been a serious challenge to Lalu; fragmented, they might find it difficult to dislodge the combine of Lalu and Bihar Chief Minister Rabri Devi.

Lalu's Yadav-Muslim votebank has grown formidable over the years. His men are in key positions and his campaigning has begun in right earnest. Notice the number of new trains allocated to Bihar in the past months. Taking time out from his responsibilities in Delhi, Lalu has intensified his campaign in Bihar.

Since the United Progressive Alliance (UPA) came to power at the Centre, political events appear to be moving in Lalu's favour. While his Union Cabinet colleague, Ram Vilas Paswan's threat to upset the RJD applecart may have got him the headlines — "I am here to end the jungle RJD raj in Bihar. This is the beginning of the end for Lalu" — in actual terms, all it may mean is a further fragmentation of the anti-RJD vote.

To take on Lalu's formidable repertoire, niggling votebank shifts won't work. It wasn't always this way: on the eve of the 1999 general elections, for instance, the BJP, with its upper-caste vote, was strong in the urban areas. Coupled with Nitish Kumar's Kurmi votes, powerful in Central Bihar, and Paswan's Dalit backing along with old Socialist votes, even Lalu was humbled from Madhepura by Sharad Yadav. Fade to 2004: the BJP is in tatters with virtually no important leader in Bihar after Sushil Modi left for the Lok Sabha, the JD (U) is a shadow of its former self with even Nitish Kumar worsted in his stronghold of Barh during the 2004 Lok Sabha elections, and Paswan seems all set to go it alone.