Patna, March 9: The spat between Lalu Prasad and his bosom pal-turned-rival Ranjan Yadav in the Lok Sabha yesterday re-establishes that the once mighty RJD boss has few friends left.
The latest heavyweight to desert Lalu Prasad and join Nitish Kumar’s bandwagon was Mahadalit leader Shyam Rajak, the present food minister, who enjoyed the sobriquet of Lalu’s “Hanuman” prior to shifting to the JD (U) ahead of the Assembly polls in 2010.
Name any powerful person in Bihar’s ruling dispensation: Nitish Kumar, Bijendra Yadav, Ramai Ram and even the JD (U)’s national president, Sharad Yadav, and deputy chief minister, Sushil Kumar Modi of the BJP. All these leaders virtually constituted the pivot to Lalu Prasad’s rise to power and ironically his fall too.
Referred to as “Chanakya” of the then Janata Dal in the early 1990s, Nitish played the most important role in getting Lalu Prasad first saddled as the leader of Opposition in Congress-ruled Bihar and then the chief minister in 1990. By all accounts, Nitish was the second powerful leader who had a big say in Lalu Prasad selecting his first 12-member cabinet. The relation between “bara bhai” and “chhota bhai” was at its peak then.
Be it Lalu Prasad’s growing arrogance or his style of functioning or his lack of knack to meet the political aspirations of all powerful leaders around him, Nitish was the first important cog in Lalu Prasad’s wheels to desert him in 1994, paving the way for the exodus of other old friends one by one over the years; Sharad Yadav, Ranjan Yadav, Bijendra Yadav, Dineshchandra Yadav, Manganilal Mandal — the list is long.
Interestingly, Nitish eventually replaced the Lalu-Rabri regime with the political resources that one constituted the RJD boss’s pivot and has been running the government and also the politics with almost the same set of leaders who were an integral part of the “jungle or goonda raj” that Ranjan referred to in the Lok Sabha yesterday, prompting Lalu Prasad to describe his old pal as the “biggest goonda of the goonda raj”.
Though he has been using the same set of people, Nitish, has, apparently, made the difference. “His rule represents a real turnaround — bringing Bihar out of the bullockcart age and putting it on the fast track of development,” said Razak, who was a minister in the Rabri Devi government.
“What has made all the difference is the change of player on the chessboard. We were and are just the pawns which the player uses, employing his wisdom. Nitish has been using us in a deft manner. Lalu misused us, causing his and also the state’s barbadi (destruction),” remarked another minister who served the Lalu-Rabri regime for nearly 10 years and enjoys reputation as a performer in Nitish’s government.
The chief minister has time and again himself stated, “Political cadres are very limited in Bihar. You have to work with the same set of people for the society is not throwing fresh faces into politics. The only difference is the manner in which one can use the limited political cadres in the state.”
What is the basic difference that Nitish has introduced in running the politics and the government? Replying to the query, insiders unanimously stated that Nitish’s main focus was on governance — a word that, as a once RJD minister said, did not exist in Lalu Prasad’s lexicon. Nitish meets his ministers only at the scheduled time, fixes targets for them and their departments and pursues them to complete the work and embark on fresh ones. Except on the occasion of Holi or other festivals, Nitish hardly enjoys calling his ministers for idle gossip or indulging in conversation not relevant to governance.
In sharp contrast to Nitish, Lalu Prasad behaved like a proverbial “chieftain” of the lot, drawing his ministers into gossip and cracking jokes even on serious occasions like presenting the budget or preparing strategy for drawing more concessions from the Planning Commission or the Finance Commission. The ministers and officials had to wait for long to get a file disposed of by Lalu Prasad for he abhorred signing on them. Nitish does not keep a single file pending on his table.
Ranjan Yadav is the same man. The former professor of geology was Rajya Sabha MP and during the better part of the Lalu-Rabri regime, was the undeclared human resource minister calling the shots in all key appointments in the education sector. Today, he is a JD (U) MP who defeated Lalu Prasad from Pataliputra. But Nitish has kept his role confined to what an MP should do in his constituency. Not more than that.
Similarly, Lalu Prasad used Razak, energy minister in the Rabri Devi government, more as his “Hanuman” — carrying out verbal raids on Nitish and Sushil Modi. Razak was known for issuing statements against Nitish almost every day as long as he stayed with the 15-year regime. Nitish has asked Razak to concentrate more on his food and consumer department and desist from making political statements. For that matter, Nitish has kept most of his ministers confined to their work rather than issuing political statements.
Thus, though Lalu Prasad and Nitish are products of the same stock, they vastly differ in playing the pawns on the chessboard. Nitish thus far appears to have checkmated his bara bhai.
