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Area of Darkness

'Why is it,' asked reader M Kohli in Dear Rediff on Thursday 'that we give a godforsaken place like Bihar the luxury of choosing their electorate?' If Bihar was taken out of the Indian Union, one famed constitutional lawyer said some years ago, many of India's problems would be solved.

Monday's electoral violence in the state, which left 31 people dead, has reinforced the popular impression of Bihar as 'an anarchic, illiterate place from the Stone Ages.' Archana Masih and Syed Firdaus Ashraf travelled recently to India's area of darkness. This is what they found:

Just let this train enter Bihar, and see how many times the train halts. People pull the chain all the time. Even if their home is just a five minute walk from the station, along the railway track, these people will pull the chain so that they can hop off the train right in front of their houses," says a disgusted passenger on the Kurla-Darbhanga Express.

The incidents of 'chain-pulling' -- as this phenomenon is known in this part of the world -- had already begun. Still in neighbouring eastern Uttar Pradesh and already two hours behind schedule, the increasing number of impromptu stops were an ominous sign of what lay ahead on the other side of the border.

A weary freedom fighter prepared to get off at the next stop. "In UP and Bihar, half the passengers that travel AC are phreedom phighters," says the cabin attendant matter of factly. Still an entire night from his final destination, he moaned his misfortune on being assigned this particular train.

Somewhere in the dark December night we entered Bihar. Regular electric supply has been a rarity in the state for many years now. Busy market and residential areas survive on sputtering, polluting generators. The generatorwallahs have generated an entire industry by providing connections to a deprived populace.

Those who can afford it hire plug ‘points’ from the generatorwallah for anything between Rs 100 and Rs 140 a month for five to six hours. "He switches the connection off exactly at 2300 hours. Since each point costs Rs 130, I have only one which I use for a fan in summers and a bulb in winters," says a lecturer.

While farmers on this rich tract of the Gangetic plain depend on generators for irrigation, Jeeradei in north Bihar -- close to the birthplace of India's first President Rajendra Prasad -- has not had an ampere of electricity for the last 18 months. "People from the neighbouring village have stolen metres and metres of cable from the electric poles but no one has come to look into the problem," says a local doctor.

It’s not that Patna, the state capital, 140 kilometres away is better off. Many prime routes have no street lights. Barely out of 1, Anne Marg, where Chief Minister Rabri Devi lives, all adjacent roads are plunged in darkness.

"Driving in the night has become very dangerous," says a 38-year-old teacher in Patna. "Once, I got pinned under my scooter after I fell travelling over a pothole. I could see a truck approaching me. The driver could not see me lying there because there were no lights on the road. I was lucky that he spotted me at the last minute and braked in time." He felt so close to his death, he says, that he wept like a child when he returned home.

There may be no streetlights in Bihar, but there are plenty of of nursery and preparatory schools. With extraordinary names -- The American School of India, The Rising Sun Academy, Sam’s all of them profess to impart English education based on the CBSE or ICSE curriculum. If that was not a promise good enough, there were prominent banners in two districts in north Bihar advocating English, Hindi and Japanese medium of instruction in one school.

All this in a state where the standard of education has deteriorated beyond repair and university sessions are delayed for many months. Where government teachers go on strike for months together and classes remain suspended till the strike is called off. Where even teachers do not shirk from carrying pairvee -- a recommendation, mandatory for one's survival in the state -- to other teachers, requesting them to pass a particular student.

"You can also pay around Rs 5,000, get your examination paper after it has been submitted and rewrite it," says a student. Corruption in the education system is so rampant that students who graduate from universities in Bihar are often refused admission to professional institutions outside the state.

Illustrating another aspect of this chilling decay, a Rashtriya Janata Dal politician says, "I once went with a chit (a note bearing details like the candidate’s roll number, subject etc) to a professor from another university. The moment I sat on a chair at his home, it broke. The professor asked me to get the chair repaired. At the carpenter’,s I discovered that the professor solicited so many recommendations that each year one or two chairs broke in his verandah."

Gross injustice for the students of Bihar, perpetrated by a governmental system that has degenerated to -- what many residents believe is -- a point of no return. Yet, the case of 11-year-old Vijay Singh spells a sorrier state of affairs.

The heir to a hefty Rajput fortune, Vijay was never sent to school for fear of being kidnapped. It was only recently that he was admitted to a school, some 12 kilometres from his village. Since he was never tutored at home, his performance at school is dismal. He falters as he spells e-l-e-p-h-a-n-t but can rattle shayaris flawlessly.

"Someone from the family takes him to school and waits there till the classes are over. From there he goes for tuition and then returns home," says his mother, whose elder daughters study in UP.

The lack of opportunity resulting from the absence of new industries has forced many youngsters to leave the state. Not one new factory has been set up in Bihar in the last seven years, ever since Laloo Prasad Yadav became chief minister. In a recent survey of investment-friendly conditions in the states, Business Today ranked Bihar 27th, right at the bottom. Even Assam and Jammu & Kashmir, which are plagued by insurgency and terror, are considered better options for investment than natural resources-rich Bihar.

The investments ushered elsewhere in the country by liberalisation have clearly not made their way to Bihar. "There is no electricity here, how can you have any industry without basic infrastructure?" argues a state government official.

Says Sushil Kumar Modi, leader of the Opposition in the Bihar assembly, "Forget about multinational companies, not a single Indian industrialist has opened a factory in the last seven years. There is so much lawlessness that even traditional traders are leaving the state due to fear of kidnapping and extortion."

The state has also seen a startling exodus. "Five million people have left the state in the last seven years," adds Modi, a Bharatiya Janata Party leader. Those who have the financial resources try their luck elsewhere. For them Bihar quickly becomes a distant link to the families they have left behind, a place to visit only once a year. "Each time I return, I find the city worse than before," says Ahmed Hassan, a lawyer who left Patna to settle down in Bombay.

There is also a dismaying absence of a work ethic. When we tried to contact the director of the Patna museum, his secretary said, "The director will not come to office today; it is very cold, you see." Ditto was the case at a college in Chapra district. There was no sign of the lecturers at 9 am, though the college started work two hours earlier.

The glories of the state – Dr Rajendra Prasad; the nation's courageous conscience keeper, Jayaprakash Narayan; Nalanda, the seat of India's oldest university -- are distant memories, part of a past resurrected only in generational arguments over the merits of the state.

Widely seen as one of India's most backward provinces, Bihar’s problems need urgent action. Although Laloo Prasad Yadav's seven-year-long government has given its people a much needed respite from frequent riots and done its mite for social justice, it has callously ignored many vital necessities -- decent education, more jobs, regular electricity, better roads, better transport, more industries, less crime…

We decided to meet Laloo Yadav and find out why Bihar has not progressed during his tenure in office. Our appointment was fixed for 1100 hours, but Laloo arrived nearly two hours late. The waiting room at the chief minister's home is so huge that Laloo's children use it to play cricket. One of Laloo's sons in fact objected to our presence there because he could not play his game freely.

While we waited, we asked Shamim, Rabri Devi's chief public relation officer, how many children the couple have. In typical Bihari style, he responded, "one to six female child, seven and eight male child, nine female child."

But Laloo refused to meet us."Lalooji," we told him, "we have come all the way from Bombay to interview you." To which he replied, "Aap Bombay se aiye ya Madras se aiye, interview nahin honga! (You may have come from Bombay or Madras, but I won't give an interview.)"

We also had an appointment with Rabri Devi, but she too turned down our request. While we were leaving, we could see the chief minister signing files as civil servants hovered around.

"For the first time in my life, I felt ashamed to salute the chief minister during a parade," a former police officer told us later. "I felt it was better to resign than to salute a women who is not fit to occupy the office of chief minister."

Statues of freedom fighters are the most distinct feature of Patna. Most of them have been inaugurated by the garibon ka massiah, aka Laloo Yadav.

But what he forgot to inaugurate during his tenure were industries, highways, roads, power plants, good schools, colleges...

Elections '98

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