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South Bihar sees sea change

Soroor Ahmed in Patna

South Bihar, which is going to the polls on February 12, is witnessing a strange reversal of roles in the post-liberalisation and post-Mandalisation years.

Former Communist Party of India legislator, Professor Wasi Ahmed summed up this phenomenon very well, "The Tatas, the main industrial house in the belt, which was once famous for making steel, is now more interested in selling salt."

What the statement implies is that the Tatas are using more modern steel production methods. Instead of providing jobs to more and more people, they are now offering voluntary retirement schemes.

TISCO has pruned down its workforce from 77,500 in 1994 to 59,252 in 1999 and TELCO retrenched nearly 4,000 temporary workers a few years back. The change in the government policy towards steel has not only affected the TISCO market but also of Bokaro Steel Plant.

The number of private sector units in the region adjoining Jamshedpur has grown from 540 to 563 between 1996 and 1998. Yet the number of workers has come down from 97,915 to 82,014 during the same period.

While INCAB Industries Limited and Indian Steel and Wire Products Limited are on the brink of closure, the Tinplate Company India Limited and Heavy Engineering Corporation are gasping for breath.

Coal business too is not as lucrative. Besides, the demand for mica, produced in Koderma district of the region, is declining because modern technology has made the mineral largely irrelevant. Its mining is an environmental hazard.

Thus fewer people are now migrating to south Bihar. What is worse many of the people whose forefathers came and settled here in the early decades of industrialisation are either returning or planning to return to their ancestral villages, be it in north and central Bihar, Uttar Pradesh, West Bengal or elsewhere.

There has been a sea change in the socio-political scenario too. The middle class (whom the Bharatiya Janata Party represents) was opposed to the demand for a separate Jharkhand state till a decade back. Now they are among the champions of Vananchal.

The tribals, whose population in south Bihar has dwindled to 26 per cent, are looking in disbelief as to what they should do now that their arch-rival -- the outsiders -- have hijacked their main slogan of separate state. They are now more concerned about their livelihood rather than a separate state.

Many educated tribals have started realising that in this age of rampant horse-trading smaller states may not be politically stable. The experience of much-advanced Goa and Haryana or less developed Seven Sisters of the north-east have made them wiser.

On the eve of assembly election, the political scene has become so muddled that it is difficult to say as to which party has an upper hand. However, the Bharatiya Janata Party may do well considering that, in 1995, a majority of the 41 seats it won were from south Bihar.

Though the then united Janata Dal won about a dozen seats in 1995, the RJD is not going to pose any major problem in the area to the three main players -- the BJP, Congress and Jharkhand Mukti Morcha.

The departure of two ministers in the Laloo Prasad Yadav-Rabri Devi cabinets -- Inder Singh Namdhari and Aklu Ram Mahto -- has weakened the RJD in the tribal south Bihar. Namdhari has joined the Janata Dal-United after the 1997 split and Mahto resigned from the party last November following differences over the issue of separate Jharkhand state.

However, the RJD has some consolation. Senior leader Dhruv Bhagat, who quit the BJP last year, has joined the RJD and is its candidate from the Raj Mahal seat.

Bhagat was among those accused in the animal husbandry scam and was suspended by the party after being chargesheeted.

Bhagat accused the party top brass of making him a sacrificial goat and shielding the real culprits who are 'close' to BJP stalwarts.

He questioned his suspension from the BJP and asked as to why he has not been expelled from the party even after two years.

Bhagat has some hold in the Santhal Parganas belt of south Bihar.

Neyaz Ahmed, a resident of Bhagat's constituency, said, "Even during the BJP days his image among the Muslims was good."

With a few days left for the polls, old rivals are making strange bedfellows.

Baljit Ram and Awadesh Singh, two ministers in the Rabri cabinet (from the region) who crossed over to the BJP last fortnight -- when they got an inkling that they would be denied tickets by the RJD -- succeeded in getting the lotus tickets despite stiff resistance from dedicated and sincere BJP workers. The BJP workers have been campaigning against these "two inefficient and corrupt ministers".

The popularity of the BJP has no doubt taken a nosedive. Yet there is none to cash in on it.

Though the party won 12 out of the 14 seats from the region in the 1996 and 1998 Lok Sabha elections, the figure came down to 11 in 1999.

Even the victory margins of all its candidates had come down and Rita Verma just managed to scrap through by 14,000 votes. She had to face a hostile crowd during the campaign as she had failed to fulfil her promise regarding a sick industry in her constituency.

Rit Lal Prasad Verma, five times BJP MP from Koderma, quit the party after his defeat in 1999.

The Congress is going to the polls with the sole aim of exposing the BJP for not fulfilling its promise of a separate state.

The truth is that none of the political parties are in a mood to create a new state, but want to keep the issue alive. Only such emotional issues would keep the people away from the real problems facing south Bihar.

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