Modi Prasad Yadav

Both are sworn enemies of the open society, destroyers of democracy, intolerant and sectarian: Modi using religion, Laloo exploiting caste. Both have set new standards in misgovernance: Modi with state complicity in riots, Laloo in corruption.

Neither refrains from instigating violence or in riding roughshod over institutional barriers: Witness their tirades against an independently assertive CEC (Lyngdoh and Seshan) and their penchant for transferring honest officials. Both attack the media as their principal enemy, although both love to cultivate it. Both care only about maximising votes and seats by preaching the politics of revenge.

Unfortunately, given political expediency and a politically polarised atmosphere in the country, both find supporters outside their constituents: Modi is egged on by the Sangh Parivar leaders while Laloo finds cheerleaders in the Left and the Congress. In the process, the entire political class ends up being tainted.

Consider Modi’s campaign style. In an incendiary speech at Becharaji, during the course of his Gaurav Yatra, Modi is believed to have lashed out at the Muslims by asking whether the ‘relief camps needed to be maintained’ only to ‘produce babies’. In a taped speech Modi says: ‘Hum paanch, hamare pachees’ should be taught a lesson.

Imagine the consequences of such a vicious campaign in polarising an emotionally charged electorate right after a communal pogrom in the state, which led to the death of thousands. After this there should be no doubt any more about the Gujarat chief minister’s culpability, indeed, his very intent.

Although the prime minister was reportedly embarrassed by Modi’s remarks, BJP President Venkaiah Naidu and other BJP leaders, impressed by the crowds that have turned up at Modi’s rallies, have decided to back their latest poster boy.

Now look at Laloo’s statement in a recent interview to the Express. In a pathetic defence of why the state government has not paid salaries to thousands of employees of Bihar’s 50 corporations for years, Laloo fumed: ‘They are all Mishras, Sinhas, Bhattacharyas, and Dubeys appointed by former upper caste chief ministers, Jagannath Mishras and Bindeshwari Dubeys.’

First, this statement is blatantly untrue. Several of the hundreds Express spoke in its recent series on the issue, were minorities and from Dalit and backward castes. Second, the statement is more reflective of Laloo’s guttural hatred for the upper castes. This is the same Laloo who, in the course of his much publicised ‘Garib Raillas’, had carried out a malicious campaign against the upper castes by claiming: ‘Bhure bal saaf karo’ (Get rid of the four upper castes).

One wishes the tapes of Laloo’s speeches were available today. Yet since he can attract massive crowds, the Left and the Congress have remained his allies in Bihar.

Even as the riots raged in Gujarat, Modi refused to visit any of the relief camps. He only visited Shah Alam camp in Ahmedabad when the prime minister had come down. Similarly, Laloo chose not to visit Senari after 66 upper caste farmers were slaughtered by the MCC in March 1999. Neither did his chief minister wife.

Laloo’s economic strategy of derailing development was aimed to bleed the privilegentsia. While campaigning in his Lok Sabha constituency of Madhepura, he confessed: Vikas aur Rajsatta main koi sambandh nahi hai. He even admitted that only the privileged end up cornering the goodies, therefore, he has decided to arrest development. However, what followed turned out to be a disaster for everyone.

Today, Bihar trails all the states, economically. If the CMIE data is to be believed, even the per capita income of agricultural labourers has dipped in the last decade under RJD rule. With a galloping population growth of almost 2.5 per cent per annum, it does not require much imagination to figure out what such a deadly cocktail can do to the province.

Although Gujarat figures among the best-performing states, Modi’s political strategy is economically suicidal. Estimates of Gujarat’s losses from riots run into hundreds of crores. If Gujarat were to suffer a decade of Modi, who knows, the numero uno state might end up at the bottom of the heap.

The claim that a Modi targetting minorities does not equal a Laloo bleeding upper castes is a weak argument. First, in a multi-ethnic democracy such as India, almost everyone is a minority, by one criterion or the other.

Second, the Bohras of Gujarat are much more prosperous than Bihar’s Brahmins. The conferring of political rights and economic rights are inextricably linked in a democracy. The absence of economic equality and growth leads to political servitude, in the same way as political inequality checks growth in the long run.

Both Modi and Laloo are followers of the great Sarvodaya visionary, Jayaprakash Narayan, who in the early seventies spearheaded two student movements against corrupt Congress regimes in the states of Gujarat and Bihar. Ironically, while JP was a harbinger of hope, the two followers have turned out to be symbols of despair.

Today, Modi and Laloo represent the perversions of the two most powerful agendas of Independent India, the Mandal principle of social justice and Kamandal’s cultural nationalism. Bereft of an economic vision and untutored by democratic principles, Modi and Laloo have together Talibanised India.

Unless the right and the left political forces realise that and politically isolate the diabolical duo, India does not have a future. As long as the BJP and Congress continue to support Modi and Laloo respectively for the sake of political expediency, the political divide will keep getting blurred. Both sides are responsible in equal measure for the great game of political opportunism. And the ordinary Indian voter is left with no choice.

Write to ajitkumarjhaexpressindia.com