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Out with Laloo!

Music critic Terry Teachout said it best last month in The Economist. "The enemy at the gate is not the United States, free trade, or even Walt Disney. It is democracy." This is exactly what Balasaheb Thackeray has been saying for years now and what most of us have criticised him for. Including me. Simply because we all cherish the idea of freedom and anything that contradicts it is seen as retrograde, fascist, criminal.

Over the years democracy has become so closely identified with freedom -- freedom of speech, freedom of faith, freedom of conviction -- that no one can get away by questioning it. You sound like a boor. A stupid, mindless, autocratic boor when you question the very nature of democracy and wonder loudly, as Thackeray did, whether democracy has been worth all the troubles we have faced in enshrining it as the Taj Mahal of our political longings.

For the first time, after entering Parliament, I am beginning to understand why people like Thackeray are so impatient with democracy. It may be the world's most wonderful, most impressive political monument but in a large, illiterate, impoverished nation like India, when we see it at work, it frightens us by its complete disregard for truth, justice, integrity. You see the ugliest, most sordid criminals messing around with everything you value and cherish and yet you can do nothing about it. Because democratic principles are at stake. Not what is right and wrong, good or bad. Democracy, sometimes, makes you feel like a right tit.

It makes you feel like a right tit because there are many things on which there can be no second opinion. Yet democracy teaches you that you must suffer these wrongs because the good of people at large depend on what the larger numbers say. If the larger numbers root for a rogue, a thief, a wanton criminal to hijack power, to perpetuate a wicked, criminal regime and thwart the beliefs and convictions of the rest of India, so it shall be. For that is democracy.

Democracy is now becoming the right of the mob to invade your moral space. To tax you for being part of a society where the good of the larger numbers, ostensibly, determines what is good for you. In practice, however, the good of the larger numbers is not the issue at all because the larger numbers never get the opportunity to exercise their opinion. It is exercised on their behalf by a bunch of half-crazed lumpen louts who have convinced us all, through muscle power and browbeating politics, that they are the conscience of the masses. So they are the ones who determine the course of history. They are the ones who drive your destiny and mine.

All in the name of democracy.

You think I am exaggerating? Let us take the case of Bihar. Let us understand what all this natak is about. Is it about Article 356, a pure and simple political issue? Or is it about something far more basic: right and wrong, good and bad, truth and falsehood? You, as a free citizen of India, must decide what you want to protect, who you want to see in power, what you want to hand over to your children as the new nation in the next millennium. Fascism has nothing to do with this. It is a matter of self preservation. Do we want to live in an India that will one day look like today's Bihar? Or do we quickly kill this frightening malaise and move on towards a better future for ourselves, even if this means taking tough, drastic steps that can be questioned on the basis of so-called democratic norms?

In other words, are we ready to kick out those wicked, thieving rogues who have looted Bihar for decades, impoverished its people, murdered every independent institution, destroyed its economy, brought it to the very edge? True, you cannot blame Laloo for the entire history of post-Independence Bihar but it is equally true that he had the opportunity and the mandate to change it. He did not. He did not because he also wanted to put his hand in the till. He wanted to continue the rape of what was once India's most prosperous state.

Enough evidence exists of what Laloo has done. Again and again and again. Starting with the fodder scam in which every finger of suspicion points towards him and his criminal associates. Every investigating officer who has tried to nail him down, be it from the CBI or the income tax, has been hounded out and sent off to Siberia. As a result, while every child in India knows that Laloo is a crook, the mighty Government of India cannot put together the evidence to keep him behind bars. So he preens around, cocky and completely self assured about the immunity his political power gives him, destroying Bihar a little bit more every day. His wife squats on the chief minister's gaddi, as his nominee, and funds his despicable political career with the money you and I pay in taxes.

Every few days I read, in the fashionable press, long tomes about how Laloo is the masiha of the downtrodden, how his wife is being ridiculed by urban India because she is this remarkable dehati woman who has taken charge of Bihar's destiny. But we all know the truth. We all know that Laloo is so popular with the media only because he is the joker in the pack. He is great copy. He stands apart from the rest of the mafiosi because he has cheek, tonnes of looted cash, a gang of thugs brought up on extortion and crime, and amazing attitude. It is this attitude that has won him so much admiration from those who are desperate to give voice to the poor and deprived millions in Bihar.

The only problem is that Laloo is not their voice.

Nor, for that matter, were those who preceded him. The thugs and the criminals and the scoundrels who were put in charge of the state by different political parties that came to power at different times. They were all there to loot Bihar. They were all there to exploit its illiteracy, its suffering for their own political gain. Be it the Congress. Or even V P Singh. Bihar was their condom. They used it whenever they felt politically aroused and, when the need was over, they threw it away. Just like that.

No one of them was Bihar's voice. If Bihar had a voice, it would not have suffered so much for five decades. If Bihar had a voice, it would not have had 1 per cent growth rate. The lowest in India. If Bihar had a voice, 60 per cent of its citizens would not go to bed without a proper meal. If Bihar had a voice, 90 per cent of the state would not be without power even as Laloo's brothers-in-law build huge mansions and palaces for themselves from stolen public funds. While teachers, doctors and thousands of employees in state undertakings do not receive their salaries for years. Its liabilities would not have piled up to over Rs 20,000 crore, its excess withdrawals reached Rs 4,000 crore in the seven years of Laloo's misrule.

As the governor pointed out while recommending the case for dismissing the Rabri Devi government -- alias Laloo's proxy regime -- during his 7 years in office, Laloo presided over the murder of 51,000 people, the rape of 7,000 women, 24,000 dacoities and 17,000 kidnappings. And these are only the registered cases. If you go by the well known fact that only 1 out of every 100 cases are ever registered, you can understand the state of Bihar.

Even the bureaucracy, hand picked by Laloo to protect his evil empire of crime, has confessed to the Centre that 29 districts are seriously disturbed by extremist and Naxalite violence. Some of them are even run by criminal gangs while Patna turns a Nelson's eye. Willfully.

What the truth is no one will ever know. Laloo's Bihar defies logic, defies your worst imagination. Article 356 is not the issue there. Even democracy is not the issue. It is only a cover. A fig leaf to hide the shameful fact of what Bihar is today. Thanks to leaders like Laloo. If you and I do not defy the so-called verdict of the people of Bihar and kick out leaders like Laloo, the people of Bihar themselves will one day run away from their terrible destiny and turn up in your city and mine, with their baggage of hate and anger and resentment, to destroy all that we have built up in the name of free India.

Do you want that to happen? If not, speak out against men like Laloo. Expose them for what they are. Forget democracy, if need be, for a while and make sure the evil empires of crime that they run are broken up and destroyed forever.

Otherwise, your India and mine will go the same way.

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Pritish Nandy