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| Passengers on board the Ranchi-Lohardaga train on Wednesday. Picture by Prashant Mitra |
Sometimes, all it takes is a line from Bollywood to feel the pulse of the voter.
“Dil hai chhota sa chhoti si asha,” grinned 25-year-old Md Qadir, a job-seeking graduate on board the iconic 107-year-old, 14-bogie Ranchi-Lohardaga train that passes four Assembly seats Ranchi, Hatia, Mandar and Lohardaga.
Lohardaga votes on November 25, Mandar on December 2 and Hatia and Ranchi on December 9.
Qadir, an alumnus of BS College, Lohardaga, is part of the new, enterprising Jharkhand where people know opportunities are too few but they work around what they have. Qadir comes to Ranchi every evening, drives a hired auto in the capital and goes back to Lohardaga in the morning by this passenger train to run a small tailoring shop.
But, he hasn’t stopped job-hunting. “Ek dhang ki naukri chahiye. Do saalon se koi naukri naseeb nahin hui. Sarkar waisi chahiye jo hum jaise ladkon ki nakamyabi ke dard ko samajh sake. (I want a proper job. I’ve been hunting for one for two years. The new government should understand our pain),” he said, when asked by this correspondent who he would vote for.
It was Lohardaga where BJP national president Amit Shah made his campaign debut for Jharkhand Assembly polls on Sunday. Shah launched a scathing attack on the Congress and Rahul Gandhi, ascribing his reason to start his campaign from Lohardaga to the fact that state Congress head Sukhdeo Bhagat was contesting from here. The Congressman is pitted against BJP sitting MLA Kamal Kishore Bhagat.
Qadir steers clear of all these. The Ranchi-Lohardaga train journey is three hours long, halting at eight stations — Argora, Piska, Itki, Tangar Basli, Narkopi, Nagjua, Akashi and Irgaon — plus terminal points Ranchi and Lohardaga. The hard-working youth would rather sleep now.
The train, reasonably crowded, does four up and down trips. But, what The Telegraph found was evident reluctance to discuss individual candidates and parties. People only voiced problems.
A 55-year-old Nagri resident Prabhu Mahto said they had to admit an ailing relative to a nursing home near Ranchi station. “There’s no good hospital within a radius of 5km of our village. Government facilities are bad. We fall under Hatia seat. Do candidates ask themselves why we should vote for them?” he said.
Mahto added he knew Naveen Jaiswal (JVM), Seema Sharma (BJP) and Alok Dubey (Congress) were in the fray in Hatia. But, the drama of the BJP-Ajsu pact and the BJP’s demand for Ajsu that sidelined Ajsu MLA Jaiswal to the JVM camp has left Mahto cold.
Nudging fellow passenger Darshan Mahto (50), a passenger about to get down at Itki, he quipped: “Kya unko panch saal sone ko milta hai (Do leaders get five years to sleep)?”