Rajesh K Jha*
Asst. Professor, Indian Institute of Mass Communication, New Delhi.

1974. A small fracas in a cinema hall in Patna. And was born perhaps the only mass movement in India after Independence. The lawns of the sprawling Gandhi Maidan in Patna reverberated with the slogan-'Bhrashtachar Mitana hai, Naya Bihar Banana Hai'. And the rest is history.

2000. Bihar faces its gravest existential crisis since its inception in 1912 after Jharkhand has come up as a separate state. There is not a whimper of protest, no popular unrest demanding at least a compensation for the beleaguered state - almost grasping for breath. Or, is Bihar already dead? Can a people with such a glorious past and as numerous cease to matter even when the question is as basic as their survival? The historic irony is that a product of the 'Total Revolution, 1974' is at the virtual helm of affairs of Bihar, questioning the very legitimacy of morality and probity in public life.

One is reminded of the saying that it is not the condition of the people per se that leads them to revolt or resistance, but the possibility of improving their condition. When the desperation and dejection among the people is complete, the possibility of change no more forms an alternative. The terms of discourse at the popular level in Bihar today are completely geared toward survival both practically and at the theoretical level.

People of Bihar, nevertheless, are redefining themselves in quite ingenious ways to cope with a thoroughly brutalised society and polity. It is a matter of sound practical wisdom and common sense for them not to venture out in the evening. The eerie calm that descends with the sunset in the villages, small towns and the cities alike, starkly reflects the deep turbulence of the civil society in Bihar.

However, even within this gloom, things have been changing of late. Though in an ironical way. In Mokamah, the shops now open till late in the night. People walk fearlessly on the streets. In Siwan, the greed of the doctors has been reigned in. Now they can not charge more than Rs.50 from the patients. In Purnia, the power situation has vastly improved. Thanks to better maintenance and quick repairs of burnt out transformers. The common thread in all these examples is the role of the 'people's representative', their position as dons and Mafia-heads notwithstanding. They wield influence with the administrative machinery, local musclemen and the people of the area to bring about these 'welcome changes'. 'The criminalisation of Politics' or the 'politicisation of crime'- term it as you may, but the fact remains that people find ways and means to survive and they do.

'Criminalisation of Politics' is a well-worn out cliché unable to reflect reality in respect of Bihar. Crime has got integrated into the socio-political fabric of Bihar with organic

linkages with the 'democratic process'. The crime has got sanitised of its classical connotation of deviant behaviour. More and more, it is being perceived as a legitimate tool for survival if not for 'upward mobility' on the ladder of social and economic status.

A look at the career graph of a 'successful criminal'. It starts with humble beginnings at the Mohalla level as a petty criminal. Soon after establishing his credentials, he would be picked up by the political leader of the area either from the ruling party or the main opposition force. A symbiotic relationship exists between the political leader and the criminals. The latter provides gun power and money power to the politician. The former ensures protection from Police and administration, gets him petty contracts such as 'tax collection' from the local bus stand, fishing rights in rivers and ponds, contract for sundry 'developmental work' of the govt. etc. This complex interrelation also incorporates the caste-reality of the area. Each caste or combination of castes nurtures its own brand of criminals. Come election, these resources gathered from across the constituency serve as the 'manpower' of the candidates. In a kind of defiant cynicism, people's top priority today is to adjust to the paradigm of Crime, Corruption and consequently a brutalised social existence.

In the dark interplay of crime-economics-politics-bureaucracy each is trying to secure its interest. In a kind of 'equilibrium of terror', the society has become the facilitator and sufferer, party and the witness, brutalised and supersensitive. The irony of the situation requires us to get into the process as to how the failure of the ruling-elite to secure development for Bihar by preparing the people to fight for their right and put up resistance has been successfully turned around through clever use of tools of mass mobilisation reminiscent of the fascist methodology.

The backwardness of Bihar is well documented. It has been variously interpreted as the outcome of an imposed 'lumpen-capitalism' and the process of 'primitive accumulation'. Whatever be the case, the blame is to be shared by all. But this unique phase in Bihar's chequered life is not natural. It is a world view consciously cultivated over the period.

The post Mandal phase provided a historical opportunity to Bihar where the voice of the poor, Dalits and backwards (the three categories above will cover almost the entire Bihar) could have become a battle cry for the transformation of Bihar. The rising voice could have effectively built up real protest and resistance against the forces, internal as well as external, that have shackled Bihar in the chains of poverty, backwardness and exploitation. However, the radical potential of the new mobilisation of masses was frittered away not as much by default as by design by the ruling elite. Bereft of any alternative agenda it resorted to devious means to legitimise a crude majoritarian ideology for status quo. The methods and techniques surprisingly resemble those practised by the fascists in Italy and elsewhere to mobilise masses.

Historically, fascism has operated on some common strategies to ensure its survival and power. Firstly, it attempts to forge a sense of identity, based on nationality, race or culture. This identity is essentially a belligerent and negative one as it draws its sustenance from an enemy - real or imagined. Thus, it builds a lumpenised identity that is very carefully steered away from the radical and transformative possibilities inherent in any mass mobilisation. This identity forms the cornerstone of the majoritarian ideology. The thin line of difference between majoritarianism and democracy is fuzzed.

Then, a major threat to the smooth functioning of the majoritarian ideology comes from the democratic institutions and an underlying consensus in the society on certain values that constitute the bedrock of democracy. Fascism promotes the decimation of any and all the institutions of democracy overtly or covertly. More importantly, the consensus in the society on the values such as justice, rule of law, sanctity of institutions of democracy and civic society are eroded. An emotionally militarised society helps this process of ensuring the delegitimisation of the institutions of democratic polity and civic society. This also provides a false sense of pride and power to the lumpenised masses. All of it is pegged around the cult of the individual. He serves as the leader, the ideology and a surrogate for the institutions of state. The charisma of the leader ensures that the facade of the project is made acceptable through demagoguery, glib talk and the clever use of traditional symbols, including the speech delivery.

Now we move on to Bihar to see how the Post-Mandal consolidation of the Dalit-Backward-Muslim communities has been manipulated to ensure the survival of the ruling class. The ruling elite, under the leadership of Laloo Prasad Yadav, having failed to channelise the energy of the emergent political force to ensure development for the state, built the backward caste identity through an eloquent hatred campaign. projecting upper castes as the enemy, he built up an identity, which was shorn of all transformative agenda. This is evident in the continued and unabated backwardness and poverty of the state without any popular resistance against it. Contrarily, this alignment of forces has narrowed down to the symbolic 'MY' (Muslim-Yadav) alliance with a one point agenda of ensuring the survival of the cult figure Laloo Prasad Yadav.

This alignment of social forces that forms the majority in the fractured polity of Bihar, could have been ineffective in implementing the agenda of the ruling elite, if other institutions were allowed to survive and function. Thus, one after another, the institutions of state and civic society have been starved, mutilated and subverted.

The Chairman of the Bihar Public Service Commission (BPSC) is in jail in what is called 'merit-scam'. There has been no election for Panchayati Raj institutions in Bihar for more than two decades despite Supreme Court's order. Going by the folklore of corruption, the lower judiciary is also not above board. The criteria for appointment to important boards, committees and decision-making bodies is either the caste affiliation or the ability to flatter the leadership or money power. So much so that a person writing Laloo-Chalisa was rewarded with the membership of Rajyasabha. The police and administration are the main arm of the state and they function just as the instrument to implement the 'will' of the ruler whether constitutional or otherwise. There is hardly any institution in the state that is functioning as per the mandate of the constitution. A number of Vice-Chancellors are facing criminal charges, some of them behind bars. Colleges and universities are non-functional. A huge number of students from Bihar now migrate to Delhi and other cities annually. The university and college teachers are regularly on strike, the most recent one lasting for more than 4 months.

Altogether, there has been complete distortion of the social and democratic values. Talk of corruption and you will be confronted with a cynicism masquerading as wisdom that 'everybody is corrupt'. Crime has become a way of life and keeping of small-unlicensed firearms a necessity to survive. The idea of rule of law is an elitist luxury where everyone agrees and asserts that anything is possible by virtue of paisa and pairavi. 'Might is right' is not just a proverb but a ground reality accepted as a valid way of life. The issues of morality and probity in public life are scoffed at as the phantoms of imagination. When cynicism gets a collective social sanction, morbidity is complete.

With the decay of the democratic and civic institutions and people possessed under a spell of a blinkered identity consciousness, the ground is ready for the promotion of the cult of individual. As the authors of Laloo Chalisa are rewarded, the temptation to emulate the successful becomes stronger. Virtue of the 'leader' is institutionalised in the school textbooks. Rabri Devi succeeds Laloo Prasad with full legislative sanction. There is even a talk of the daughter being anointed in place of Rabri Devi, should such an occasion arise. The entire structure of the party organisation and state govt. revolves around the personality of an individual.

The processes outlined above are facilitated under a generalised atmosphere of terror. Dissent in any form is dealt with firmly through the denial of share in the booty of power or other means that need not be elaborated. The proliferation of the cottage industry of arms, easy availability of guns and bombs and the impunity with which crime can be committed are facilitated by the active involvement of the state machinery. The mutually rewarding and beneficial relationship between the politician and the criminal is premised on the cooperation and sympathy of the administrative machinery under the political patronage. Although the spread of the criminal-politician nexus is quite even across the political spectrum, the ruling party always has an edge by virtue of being in control. An overtly militarised society breeds enough mutual terror, tension and apprehension in the people to leave any scope to rekindle the forces of resistance, regeneration and social transformation.

This completes the milieu in Bihar that sustains the status quo of backwardness, poverty and exploitation. Success of this project is borne out by the fact that there is no mass upheaval and unrest amid the misery, lawlessness, and decay of civil society and institutions of state that plagues Bihar today. The confluence of forces, some carried from the historical legacy of the state and some imposed by the vested interests, seems to have completely stymied the spirit of resistance and change in Bihar. But this is not the end of the story. In ways that are unforeseen and unpredictable, every society gropes its way towards freedom and peace, progress and prosperity howsoever bloody the path may be. Bihar can not be an exception.

The way society responds to crises are varied. Today, Bihar copes up with its predicament, at one level through the massive exodus of both the brawn and the brain. The migration of labour to Delhi, Punjab, Haryana, Kashmir and all parts of the country is so massive that at the time of the harvest in Bihar, there is an acute scarcity of labour. The migrant labour from Bihar has started 'establishing' itself in different parts of the country adopting whatever means of livelihood they can. In Delhi one can see a large number of people from Bihar turning hawkers trading things from vegetable to groundnut. The net contribution to the Bihar economy in terms of money that is regularly sent by the Non Resident Biharis would come to be a substantial amount. The migration of the students from Bihar to Delhi and other cities is evident in the large number of students from Bihar in DU, JNU etc. The academic record of the ex-patriate Biharis is quite commendable and it is borne out not just in the results for civil services, but in most of the competitive examinations including engineering and Medical examinations.

Those who have stayed back in Bihar, within the paradigm of crime and corruption, are becoming more discerning and careful. In choosing their representatives, people are backing even those criminals who may promise them a little more guarantee of life and peace, if not development and prosperity.

For a people who have been robbed of the alternative to a decaying and dehumanised political and social order, the support to gangsters and criminals is but a cry of the wounded soul groping for its way out of the morass.

(The views expressed here are purely of the author and in no way reflect the view of the organisaton for which I work.-author)

You may send your comments to the author at e-mail rakujha@yahoo.com