“Bihar will be divided over my dead body”..famous lines from Laloo Yadav... India’s funniest poltician. Many voted for him only for this posture. He won the elections and formed a coalition government with the Congress Party. And they together agreed to the BJP’s viewpoint to divide Bihar.

For the people of Bihar Laloo Yadav isn’t funny, not any more.

On India’s Independence day, a youth, Chandan Bhattacharya, self-immolated himself at the gates of the Patna High Court as his father who worked for a state-owned corporation wasn’t paid his salary for ten years. It hit national headlines. A media campaign, followed by a PIL filed by Kapila Hingorani resulted in a Supreme Court order asking the Bihar government to pay Rs.50 crores as arrears to the starving employees. More than a thousand have died in penury and for want of medicine. I think if Bihar wasn’t divided there was still some hope...nobody committed suicide in Bihar the way Chandan did. Bihar, an already poor state, lost all of its industrial base, revenue, forest cover and even educational institutions to the new state of Jharkhand. Bihar was left with nothing but floods. And no politician quit his party over the division of Bihar.

Even two days before Bihar’s bifurcation, RJD ministers only spoke in their master’s voice. So I asked a senior RJD minister whether his party was more important or the state. He naturally replied, ‘Bihar’. So I asked him shouldn’t he quit a government bent upon destroying Bihar. And he replied, “I will ask the Prime Minister of India that he dismiss my government but please, please don’t divide Bihar.” The interview over, he said, “You know even you the media are responsible for all this. You will not be able to have this telecast. He went on to say, “You know people ask me so when is Laloo Yadav dying”. I tell them, “He is already dead.” Death is not literal. For a leader death is when he doesn’t have his way.

The minister’s interview was not telecast.

Bihar’s bifurcation, some said, is a fait acompli, but I saw in it India’s disintegration. The way it was done went against the grain of democracy. You now only need a handful of MLAs from one region and a shaky coalition at the Centre needing your support to be able to have your own state!

And what followed the bifurcation was only expected. IAS officers, policemen opting for Jharkhand, businesses moving to Ranchi. They all had their reasons.

But it did strike me when I heard CARE (Cooperative for Assistance and Relief Everywhere)-India, was also shifting to Jharkhand. I went to their office and found they were packing up, all set to go but I did manage to get a statement from their Country Director in New Delhi. His fax statement said since CARE is an international aid agency it works under the directions of the Union Human Resources Ministry and this year Bihar had not been listed as among the states where CARE was to work.

In the past 50 years Bihar’s condition has if anything worsened. And current Planning Commission figures put Bihar at the bottom. And yet CARE was being moved out of Bihar. I filed a public interest petition in the Patna High Court and my lawyer Dharmesh Kumar without charging a fee argued for over a year to get CARE back to Bihar.

There were two reasons why I filed the case. One was because I was shocked how the Supreme Court had moved all the public interest petitions over the division of State from the High Court to the Supreme Court and secondly CARE’s being moved out of Bihar was perfect proof of discrimination against Bihar. And this time Laloo Yadav was a part of the discrimination!

Don’t give up on Bihar. Not just as yet. The fight to revive Bihar is already on. Whenever I think of Bihar I think of Dr. R. Suman, an activist in Patna who’s on a maun vrat (he does not speak at all) for four years now against Bihar’s bifurcation. His PILs are still pending before the Supreme Court. He’s hired the country’s topmost lawyers and when I asked him how he can afford them, he tells me in writing Bihar is more important than a few lakhs of rupees. He will sell his home.

The caste riots, tribal versus non-tribal riots in Jharkhand only confirm that the creation of a new state was a mistake. The increase in naxal violence where in two years 200 policemen have been killed by naxals in Jharkhand, confirm Jharkhand is a big, very big mistake. And, as if to equal that, unemployment has led to crimi-nalisation, and kidnappings have become an industry in Bihar where even politicians are involved. Kidnappers take shelter in the official residences of politicians. And sometimes there is no difference between kidnappers and politicians.

Corruption is common to both Bihar and Jharkhand. Forget the 600 crore fodder scam...now every development activity in Bihar and Jharkhand involve misappropriation of funds. Did you know that Bihar and Jharkhand should have nine Engineers in Chief, it has none; instead of 47 Chief Engineers, there are just 7 and only 20 per cent of Superintending Engineers remain. It must be remembered that for projects above 1 crore rupees the technical sanction of an Engineer-In-Chief is compulsory!

So is there any alternative to Laloo Yadav?

Samata Party’s Nitish Kumar has been often projected as the alternative; but if that ever happens it will not be an alternative. Nitish Kumar as railway minister has encouraged criminalisation by granting large railway contracts to the men of several dreaded gangsters now in prison. Some of them have even won elections because the Samata Party didn’t field any candidates against them.

It is ironical that Bihar needs an alternative like no other state. But all political parties continue to patronise criminals thus leaving no choice to the voters.

So politicians like Nitish Kumar and communal parties like the BJP in many ways are reasons why a Laloo Yadav continues his 13 year misrule in Bihar.

One senior minister asked me whether in the near future would there be a place for traditional politicians at all! And as I explained to a foreign researcher how powerful politicians even ensure panchayat funds go to their men, another senior minister clarified, ‘Powerful means criminally inclined’!

Laloo’s only strength is his secularism. In other words, it is BJPs communal politics that keeps Laloo Yadav in power. Or look it this way, it is secularism’s weakness that its survival now depends on politicians like Laloo Yadav. One Muslim from Bihar said he just couldn’t comprehend this secularism bit, “In secular Bihar do Muslim’s not feel the bump on potholed roads?”.

If you ask me 13 years of even good governance is a long time in a democracy. In Bihar, it has been 13 years of misrule.

Check out this RJD slogan on the day of the lathi rally, “Laloo Yadav Nahin aandhee hai, aaj ka Gandhi hai!”

As I drove home that night a sandstorm swept the capital. Patna and its people just couldn’t see...

MANUWANT CHOUDHARY is a Reporter with NDTV in Patna. The views expressed are his own.