This is one of my old pieces, from my first trip to Patna in September before the elections.
I landed in Patna at 8 a.m. and almost immediately start drawing parallels with the Lucknow. I have never been to Bihar before this but have travelled in Uttar Pradesh a little bit. In my mind I am expecting Patna to be more or less like Lucknow. To me I have set expectations very low! I was obviously not prepared for what I saw!
I landed in Patna at 8 a.m. and almost immediately start drawing parallels with the Lucknow. I have never been to Bihar before this but have travelled in Uttar Pradesh a little bit. In my mind I am expecting Patna to be more or less like Lucknow. To me I have set expectations very low! I was obviously not prepared for what I saw!
This
is an interesting time to be making a trip to Bihar. The state assembly
election dates were announced not a week ago. Nitish Kumar has headed the State
for a decade now, and the outside world has portrayed him as “the best thing to
happen to Bihar” in a long time. But in this election, he for the first time
contests without his old times allay, BJP (or the NDA) and has joined forces
with the man he first came to uproot (Laloo Yadav). I can feel the intensity
and the excitement in the air, almost as soon as I land. Patna is plastered with huge hoardings of
Nitish Kumar and Narendra Modi.
I
travel from the airport to Gandhi Maidan, through one of the most important
roads as of now, this road has all the major party offices on it. And even
though its too early for the crowds of political aspirants to come, one can see
the remnants of yesterdays activity. The roads in Nitish’s Patna look good and
well maintained. But as soon as I mention this to my driver, he is quick to
tell me, “Laloo ke raj main yeh sab kuch nahin tha. Lagta tha dihat main gadi
chala rahe hain” which would roughly
translate to …During Laloo’s reign none
of this was here, it felt as if we were driving on village roads.
After
hearing this completely unsolicited endorsement of Nitish Kumar’s governance, I
am hopeful that my conjectures may not be completely unfounded. During the day, I crisscross the city meeting
some of the people that will help me with my study. They all tell me the
positives that have happened during Nitish Kuamr’s period. But as I am moving
from one place to another, I see a bit of Patna. Its not Lucknow, there is more
poverty and less of everything else.
The most
important shopping destination in Patna is pointed out to me and I look at both
sides of the road expecting to see big neon signs and the big commercial brands
we see everywhere nowadays. But no, I am being shown a building with some old
boards hanging loosely from its sides. It reminds me of my childhood, of the
local markets in Delhi. That Delhi does not exist anymore, but it is still the
current Patna. There is something I feel is missing from a growing state
capital. There are no big glass buildings that we now associate with corporate
offices. I don’t see any buildings with names of MNCs or even our own Indian
companies anywhere.
One
of the last things I saw in Patna before I headed back to the airport was a
stark reminder that I am going to be working in one of the poorest states in
the country. We were driving alongside
one of the flyovers that Nitish Kumar has built. I was now used to seeing these
around Patna but what I have not seen anywhere else was what was under the
flyover. Bamboo and blue plastic sheets divided the entire area under the
flyover into 10 feet by 10 feet homes for the migrant Bihari. There were not
just a few as we see under some of the flyovers in Delhi, but this was an
entire slum, housing definitely over 2000 people under one flyover. Nitish
Kumar may have built the road, there is still a long way to go, to bring the
absent business and sustained and inclusive growth to Bihar.
But
none of this is the actual reason why I was in Patna. I was in Patna to talk
about women’s empowerment in Bihar. Nitish Kumar has won many accolades for his
Mukhya Mantra Balika Cycle Yojana. This was one of the first few programs
implemented by the Nitish Kuamr government; it provided cycles to all girls
when they enrolled in secondary school. It was remarkably successful. Now one
can see girls regularly riding bicycles to school in rural Bihar. But this is
not just a point about increased enrollment, girls on cycles will not happen
unless people feel safe about letting their girls go out. A man I spoke to put
it very clearly, when he said “ab dekhiye, choti choti bachiya cycle par school
jati hain, Laloo ke time main to beti ko ghar se bahar bhejne main dar lagta
tha, cycle kahan chalati”…Now you see
little girls riding bicycles to school, during Laloo’s time we were scared to
let our girls go outside, how would they ride bicycles?
This
program was started in 2006, now the first cohort of girls would be in their
early 20s and would be looking for work (if they finished school) and would
also be eligible to vote. The initial scheme was followed by 50% reservation
for women in the local panchayat elections and 50% reservation for women in the
hiring of para-teachers for the schools. Now the government t is proposing a
35% reservation for women in the police
force. So basically the girls who finished school now have opportunities to
join the labor force. This is one type of empowerment, trying to make them
financial independent.
However,
are these girls becoming more confident and independent? The Bihar elections may throw some light on
that. Nitish Kumar has for the past 10 years nurtured an electorate that has
not been tapped into by any political party either in any state or at the
national level. We are talking about the 50% women in the electorate. Though we
have many women leading political parties, Sonia Gandhi, Mayawati or
Jayalalitha, they or anyone else has never systematically worked to gain the
trust of this segment of the electorate.
One
potential reason for the neglect of this group may be that in India, most women
either do not vote or if they do vote then they would just vote for the same
person as their husbands, fathers or brothers. They have rarely exercised their
independent choice in this matter. This election in Bihar may show us that
women have freed themselves from the choices of the men in their lives. If they
choose to vote for Nitish Kumar surpassing the caste and religion barriers then
they can themselves single handedly bring back Nitish Kumar to power.
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