A Bihari lesson in identity politics

April 30, Chhapra

"What's your name?" asked Sharad Yadav as soon as we met in his house at Madhepura town. I'd encountered this question before too and as he would demonstrate during the course of the day, the JD(U) president was not really intent on knowing my name. This was an attempt to know what came after my name. There was a time - in Delhi, especially - when I'd happily say "Deepu Sebastian," sometimes to hilarious consequences. "You Srivastava? Me Srivastava! From UP?" said a man grabbing my hand to shake it violently. He was late and had been rushing to catch the opening ceremony of the Delhi Commonwealth Games, but found time to stand outside the stadium and be interviewed for two minutes.

If it was a foreign middle name that made me start using my first name more often, in Jharkhand it almost became a compulsion. My surname, my "title," as they call it there, would be my marker. And I didn't want to give anyone the pleasure of judging me by name.

Bihar, I had come to imagine, would be worse. But then, Sharad Yadav would top worse and then some. I should have known: this was a man who pissed off the upper castes so much, someone has vandalised his Wikipedia page by keying in, "....He also is pro-reservation and supports divisions based on castes in the society instead of promoting meritocracy." So when I told Yadav my first name, he shot back, "Deepu, yes....but what is your caste?" I smiled politely and said that I was from Kerala and didn't know my caste. Yadav looked thoroughly displeased.

Once inside his SUV, Yadav was quite happy to recount his memories of Kerala Socialists. I played along, but wanted to drag him back to caste: it is not everyday that one gets to directly engage with an individual who puts to test all those theories discussed in classrooms and coffee shops. It was time to use my identity as leverage. "I am from a caste that was supposed to catch fish. We are OBCs," I said.

Yadav was positively glowing when I told him that. After all, he had earlier been berating the Hindi news channel reporter ahead of me: "You in the media are all of one caste. How will you understand the problems of the oppressed?" Yadav seemed to enroll me into some private club immediately. "You are a mallaah," he tagged, stamped and sorted me. "We will be going to a mallaah village today. Your people must be going to the sea to catch fish. There's a different caste for that," he mentioned a caste name, but I failed to catch that.

My problem was with the apparent clash of two ideas that the JD(U) was dealing with - vikas, even as it tried to create and nuture caste-based votebanks. There would be no point trying to ask such a question to many politicians in this country: they remain surprisingly coy of describing their votebanks. An exception would be Lalu Prasad, who almost proudly called his votebank the M-Y. The only other time I had probed a politician on the question of identity during this election was when I asked former Jharkhand chief minister Babulal Marandi whether he was a leader of the adivasis, specifically the Santhals - his tribe. This was in Dumka, the heart of the Santhal Pargana, where Babulal was making a move to become precisely that. But his ambition to be chief minister made him tell me that he was a leader of the poor. It took some prodding for him to use the word "adivasi" in a sentence; he said that since adivasis were the poorest, fighting for the poor would made him their representative, too.

There would be no such problems with Sharad Yadav. "No one here votes according to his caste....Everyone is with me here," was his first claim. So I pointed out that the constituency has not sent a non-Yadav to the Lok Sabha since 1957 or so. "Arre, don't you understand your own society? What kind of a journalist are you?" I was learning that Sharad Yadav on the backfoot is a vicious opponent. "I am told the Yadavs are voting for the RJD this time," I said. "You media don't understand the society. People don't look at caste when voting. What happened in 2009 and 2010?" asked Yadav, pointing out that the Yadav candidates of the RJD overwhelmingly lost while the Yadav candidates of his party won in large numbers. "So, you were keeping tabs of the number of Yadavs who won and lost?" I asked. "Of course! Everybody has caste," he said.

I'm sure that at least a part of what Yadav said was right: I had parachuted into Saharsa only the previous night. However, I got the sense that, facing the prospect of coming third this election, Yadav was trying to tell his voters that though caste exists, it should not matter. It remains a fact that what carried Yadav over the line four times in Madhepura was the BJP's votes: he managed to bring in some Yadav and Muslim votes but was always dependent on how the RJD fared. He also broke his own rules. Yadav went to the house of the convicted Bahubali and former MP Anand Mohan, a Rajput, to seek his mother's blessings. The desperation was not lost on anyone. In other places, he presented vikas as something above caste. "Caste will not give you electricity, bridges and this helicopter," he said at Sahugarh, pointing to the Eurocopter EC120 in which we had flown in, the spitoon for his khaini habit on the floor between us.

As we touched down at Manuan in Mahishi block and on the banks of the Kosi, he pointed at the upturned boats kept at the periphery. "Mallaahs!" he said, grinning. I became a campaign prop at the village: "I have brought along a journalist from Kerala today, someone from your Mallaah caste." Yadav later told me he had looked around for me at that moment, but I was thankfully standing by a speaker to listen to the speech and avoided becoming a specimen.

As we got into the chopper at the end of the meeting there, I was on the side where most people were. Yadav slapped me sharply on my arm and ordered, "Wave!" so I raised an awkward right hand. Slap again. "Wave at the people in the back!" I turned around and waved. People waved back. Then, as the rotor's RPM increased, they ran back and disappeared in a cloud of dust.

JD(U) on verge of losing crucial Madhepura

Published here
Saharsa, April 29

From the EC120 Eurocopter, Sharad Yadav pointed to the Kosi and a bridge across it. "I had it built," he said, with the authority of someone who has won four times from Madhepura since 1991.

Later, he spoke of the 3.59 km bridge, connecting Baluha Ghat and Gandual and inaugurated last December, at Amarpura in Kehra block. "Give me your vote based on what we have done," he said, "we" being him and the government led by the Janata Dal (United), of which he is national president. However, Yadav had no answer when a member of the crowd started heckling him over an unbuilt plus-two school. "My job as an MP is to look after the big projects," he told the crowd, as an intended answer. At the end of his speech - a schoolmasterly one - he asked the crowd if all of them would vote for the arrow his party's symbol. Some people merely crossed their arms and smiled sheepishly.

A lot is at stake for Sharad Yadav and his party at Madhepura. With the JD(U) expected to take heavy losses this general elections, there is an urgency to protect the home bases: Nalanda, Chief Minister Nitish Kumar's home constituency, and Madhepura. CM Kumar himself came to embody this desperation when he camped at Madhepura town from April 18 to 28, having files sent over from Patna by special messengers and campaigning for his party's president.

However, it does not seem to be adding up for Sharad Yadav. Kumar's vikas, which once lent credibility to the JD(U) claim of jamaat over jaat, has slowed down and threatens to dry up. "He always thought that dealing with day-to-day affairs was always below him. Dealing with big projects works if there are party MLAs doing groundwork. We had only three MLas in the six assembly constituencies of the area; one has left now," said a JD(U) leader. The MLA who left is not quite out of the doorway yet - former Industries Minister Renu Kushwaha has been suspended by the JD(U) for campaigning for Vijay Kumar Singh, who is the BJP's candidate.

Yadav, who built his political career by riding on the mass appeal of others, has only the Mahadalit votebank created by Kumar to fall back on. "He always won by eating a little into the Muslim-Yadav votebank of the RJD and then getting our votes. That's how he famously defeated Lalu [Prasad Yadav] in 1999. Where will he get that now?" asked a former BJP MLA from the area. It was alleged that BJP's Singh, who had never contested elections, was a dummy candidate - a result of Yadav's close association with BJP leaders that also saw him become the NDA Convenor. However, the BJP has fought hard to protect its votebanks and attract youngsters, making Madhepura a triangular contest. "When I was in Patna discussing ticket distribution, we were quite relieved that there was no BJP organisation in Madhepura. I returned to see many people willing to support them," said the JD(U) leader.

In search of a victory, Yadav has been pushed to do things he would not have done otherwise, like going to murder-convict, Rajput Bahubali and former MP Anand Mohan's house to seek his mother's blessings. "Why do you call him Bahubali? Anand Mohan is a goonda. His brother Madan Singh works for our party; that's why I went there," said Yadav when asked. Most of his expletive-laden answer cannot be printed, and his inability to assimilate has become a headache for the Madhya Pradesh-born Yadav's campaign managers: he rarely uses aap, prefers tu and does not speak Maithili.

In contrast is the soft-spoken Rajesh Ranjan, the RJD candidate behind whom the Muslims and Yadavs have lined up once again. Dressed in a full-sleeved pink-and-white striped shirt and white linen trousers, he stood deferentially before the crowd at Banma Itahri block's Gordor village's madrasa, sampling from the many plates of snacks before him. "You have kept so much food before me; it's hard not to eat it all," he said to laughter. At the end of a speech, during which he seemed to be mumbling to himself, he said, "The same thought that inspired Mohammad Saheb drives me. Pappu is the name of the one who will help the last man." Thunderous applause followed.

Pappu is also the man who was convicted of a murder in 2008 before being acquitted last year by the Patna High Court. Even as he faces an appeal in the Supreme Court, Pappu Yadav has 24 cases - including a charge of murder - to keep him company. "Lalu Yadav has given the lantern [RJD's poll symbol] to a bulldozer and asked it to come after me," said Sharad Yadav at Amarpura. His reputation as a Bahubali precedes Pappu. "I have been noticing an anti-Pappu wave in the last two days. People, like the vaishyas, who remember the violence unleashed by his people during Pappu's peak, will hopefully come over to us," said the JD(U) leader.

Pappu, large and towering, also has a proportionally large heart, according to his supporters. "The M-Y equation might work for Lalu, but I am a servant of all people here," said Pappu as his open jeep made the last campaign trip through predominantly Muslim areas of Saharsa on April 28 evening, an hour a supporter described as, "one hour, 5000 votes."

Pappu was not well and everyone seemed to know this. "He has gone to the bathroom," said a middle-aged man at the entrance to Chotta Gordor village. Even as he sipped a chilled ORS solution, Pappu sampled everything kept before him by waiting crowds. In between, he finds time to signal that if elected, the violence might re-start. However, as opposed to the past, when his gangs fought the Rajputs, a new enemy waits Pappu. "I want to end the injustice being perpetrated by the Nitish government. They have placed Mahadalit dalals in each government office. Their people are in control. I want to end that," he said.

That man in the Dumka photograph

Published here.
Dumka, April 25

There is someone lying bleeding in the seat before him, possibly dead. Then, there is the darkness - of the night, soot from an IED blast, that extends to his bloodied face. Yet, the middle-aged man in the window seat of that bus leans across and holds his stare, pointing his finger, as if to make a poignant point.

Like the moment that made US Marine James Blake Miller the Marlboro Man of his generation, this was Assistant Sub Inspector Hiralal Pal in Dumka, trying to make sense of a world where EVM machines are blown to smithereens.

Through Thursday night, Hiralal was in shock. His family from Bihar's Ara could not reach Dumka's Sadar Hospital, so he was attended to by colleagues in the district police, who managed to get a table fan placed near him. No one bothered to wipe down the soot on him and when Hiralal managed to sit up to drink water once in a while, his eyes bright against the darkness of his face, looked perplexed throughout.

Maybe it had to do with the way in which he escaped a carnage when alleged Maoists selectively went after those in uniform. "I was unconscious after the blast. Some Maoists came near me - they were only shooting at policemen - but someone lying next to me told them I was already dead," he told this reporter at around 12.30 in the night. Unlike Subodh Kumar Mistry, his neighbour at the hospital and a headmaster from Siriyahat  - who told his story to anyone whom leaned across his bed, Hiralal simply did not have the energy to go on. This reporter was at the hospital till 1.10 in the night. Later, at some point in the night, he was referred to Dhanbad's PMCH.

Hiralal was promoted from being a constable ahead of the elections. "Pal is quite fine; his family is on the way to Dhanbad. He is quite senior; must be around 55 years," said a policeman at the Mufassil police station, where he is posted.

"I heard about the incident at 4.40 in the evening. I was on poll duty myself and knew Pal was supposed to be in a booth in the area. I tried calling him to get the news, but calls were not going through," said the policeman.

"He had given me a missed call at around two in the afternoon. When I called back, he said he had merely wanted to talk. So, we talked," said another colleague at the police station.

Pal, a policeman who gives missed calls to people so that he could merely have a conversation, might just be pointing fingers in the photo. At people who thought it was appropriate to send a 55-year-old, less-than-ideally trained policeman to a known Maoist area, knowing fully well that given the option of a bus over walking in the Santhal Pargana summer, he would take it.

SOP lapses at Dumka, district admin under scanner

Published online here and in the newspaper here.
Dumka, April 25

The CPI-Maoist attack in Dumka's Sikaripara on Thursday evening has brought to the fore serious questions about the nature of deployment of central forces while exposing the state police's claim that it is close to self-sufficiency.

Primary analysis has revealed that there were serious lapses in observing the Standard Operating Procedure which began at the level of the Deputy Commissioner and Superintendent of Police. However, concerned officials are in a bind as to what action can be taken against them, as both DC Harsh Mangalam and SP Nirmal Kumar Mishra are perceived to be close to Chief Minister Hemant Soren, also the MLA from Dumka.

The attack came at the end of a relatively peaceful three-phase polling in the state which saw no LWE-related casualties, provoking Director General of Police Rajeev Kumar to say, "We had ensured peaceful elections by keeping strictly to the SOP. We will have to examine what went wrong here." Examining the violations to the SOP would be opening a Pandora's Box: the Tata Magic that was fired upon and the mini bus that the IED tore through on the Sarsajor-Palasi road were not supposed to be there in the first place. The poll officials were to walk back with the EVMs.

Fingers will be pointed at Lambodhar Mahato, the sector magistrate travelling in the Magic who allegedly took the bus to booths 100 and 101, located at Primary School, Jamkandar and Upgraded Middle School, Asma respectively. However, one wonders where he got his orders from. "At the moment, it would be wrong to point fingers at the DC as there is nothing that suggests that he gave the orders for those particular booths. However, we have to find out why officials who walked to the booth took a bus back," said Jharkhand's Chief Electoral Officer P.K. Jajoria, who also said that two sets of EVMs were damaged in the blasts; there would be a re-poll. A source in the state police said that the SOP was violated everywhere. "The DC is new; he does not understand the risks. In order to complete the polls early, he allowed the bus to go in," said a senior officer.

The sector magistrate's mistake could have been corrected by security personnel posted at the booths, who could have insisted that they walk back. Howeer, while CRPF personnel - posted at booth 100 - walked, district police personnel boarded the bus. "The CRPF personnel even asked at least one ASI-ranked officer of the district police to walk, but he did not pay heed," said an officer of the state police.

As a result, no CRPF personnel was killed in the encounter - four personnel of the Dumka district police and one of Garhwa police were killed while three policemen of Dumka and two of Garhwa were injured. An official of the State Bank of India, another of the Dairy Development Board and the cleaner of the mini bus too, died. At least three civilians - a headmaster, an official of the Industries Department and the driver of the mini bus - sustained injuries.

The incident puts paid to the state police's claim that it is ready for a central forces-free existence and that only a slack in recruitment is keeping the CRPF here. There are also questions being raised about force deployment - whether too many CRPF personnel were posted in the urban areas while the poorly trained district personnel had to man some high-risk booths. It is not yet known whether there will be an investigation into wheher the deployment, if faulty, was done maliciously to help anyone. "The CRPF was in majority in Maoist areas too. But despite us telling them repeatedly to be careful, our police officers simply do not listen," said Dumka's Superintendent of Police Nirmal Kumar Mishra.

The incident came a day and five years after the April 23, 2009 attack on a party returning after Lok Sabha polls within Sikaripara's adjacent Kathikund police station limits, when one police personnel died. However, what resonates more is the fact that the attack happened less than a year after the July 2 attack that killed Pakur's Superintendent of Police Amarjit Balihar within Kathikund.

The state police will regret the fact that it has been able to arrest only three individuals whom even they admit are allegedly low-level CPI-Maoist operatives in the Balihar murder case. This is because Thursday evening's attack bears striking similarities to the July 2 incident, suggesting the same individual planned and executed both. Even DGP Kumar admitted on Friday that his officers suspect Santhal Pargana Zonal Commander Praveel's hand; he was named in the Balihar murder too.

With the exception of the use of the IED - an escalation which resulted in the first IED-related casualties in the Santhal Pargana region - almost everything about the two attacks mirror each other. A culvert was chosen as the point of attack - in Thursday's case, one made by farmers by breaking the concrete road to bring water. The Maoists positioned themselves in foilage on the right flank in both cases and targeted the driver as well as tyres of the lead vehicle in the convoy. This slowed down the mini bus on Thursday, and as it negotiated the culvert, the IED was set off.

Anecdotal evidence suggests that the Maoists chased policemen who ran into the field on the left and shot them: a body was recovered about 100 metres away from the point of occurrence. There is also a suggestion that they went after policemen - magistrate Mahato, who raised his arms, was not attacked. The driver of the bus made it to a CRPF camp two kilometres away with minor injuries while the bus' s cleaner died in the blast.

Dumka is Lost

Published online here and in the newspaper here. Report from the field on first day published here.
Dumka, April 25

Two staff nurses tried to be everywhere at once, fix too many broken people, lost count of saline drips running out and had to pacify angry crowds. Two other colleagues on duty had to be in the labour room and operation theatre, where the only duty doctor of the night was stationed.

This was Dumka, the sub-capital of Jharkhand, the assembly constituency of the chief minister, whose people sent his father - a three-time-chief minister - to the Lok Sabha seven times. And there were two nurses with the bare essentials to patch up the 10 injured and send them on their way to hospitals at least five to eight hours away, on a day violence was anticipated. "Today was better; we have four nurses instead of three," said one of the nurses.

When the CPI-Maoist struck at the heart of Jharkhand Mukti Morcha on polling day, attacking two vehicles - killing five policemen and three individuals returning after polling near Sikaripara's Sarsajor village - more politicians turned up at the Sadar Hospital than there were staff nurses tending to the 10 injured. Chief Minister Hemant Soren, former CM Babulal Marandi - also a candidate from Dumka and the BJP's candidate Sunil Soren went to offer commiserations.

They all arrived to boos from an angry crowd and left, but it was an absence that was noticed. "Shibu Soren kaha hai?" asked the crowd that rushed into the hospital at 11.55 PM. They were angry that the saline drip for the driver of the Tata Magic, one of the two vehicles attacked, may not last his five-hour-trip to Dhanbad.

This was the second major attack in the Santhal Pargana - previously considered resistant to the growth of Maoists - in under a year. Dumka, Pakur and Deoghar were added to the MHA's scheme for LWE areas only in April 2012; Sahibganj, Godda and Jamtara, the three other districts that comprise the six-district Santhal Pargana, are the only districts not considered LWE-affected. On July 2 last year, when Pakur's Superintendent of Police Amarjit Balihar was killed en route Pakur in Dumka's Kathikund block - adjacent Sikaripara - the police largely believed it was a one-off incident of a police officer paying the price for letting down his guard: the state police have always thought that the Maoists' conception of the Santhal Pargana as an "Expansion Zone" was a bit far-fetched.

But, as an exasperated villager said outside the Sadar police station on Thursday night, "Dumka is not safe anymore. They seem to be everywhere." Reporters covering LWE incidents frequently hear an anecdote about how the police had surrounded a top Maoist leader and how they had to let him go because someone in the JMM made a call. The story cannot be substantiated - it takes place in a different forest in each retelling - but speaks volumes about the relationship between political parties and the Maoists in the state. Now, the Maoists have dared take on the JMM in their own home.

Chief Minister Hemant Soren and father Shibu Soren were late to the ceremony at the Police Lines to pay respects to the dead on Friday morning. "You must not make dead bodies wait," said a frustrated CRPF officer.

When asked about the entry of Maoists into the region, a JMM leader once told this reporter, "Who are these Maoists? These are our boys. They are JMM workers by day and roam with a gun by night." The arrogance being that every Santhal is a JMM supporter. However, with the increasingly-weakening party turning a blind eye towards agitations against big coal-based projects, even actively promoting them, politically active individuals will increasingly see an alternative in the Maoists. This newspaper wrote recently that Babulal Marandi wants to end the JMM and replace it with his own party. The Maoists might want to have their own say in the matter.

At around 11.30 PM, Rekha Rajak sat inside an ambulance and wailed. "They loaded him on to this vehicle and asked us to go to Ranchi [400 km away]. I have no money for fuel; I am worried the driver will abandon us midway," she said. This newspaper had met her son Shivshankar Rajak earlier at the Sikaripara police station, who said his father Ram Pratap Rajak, an official of the Industries Department, had called his mother's mobile phone at around 6 PM, asking for water. Help came at around 8.30 PM. Ram Pratap told his family he had been shot in the foot when in fact he had taken a bullet to the head, too.

Shoulders slumped at the Sikaripara police station when news came through that Assistant Sub Inspector R.N. Singh's body was spotted at the encounter spot. A young constable kept asking a colleague, who had returned after a search and rescue for the injured, whether a friend had made it. "I don't know, it's too dark, there are bodies all around the place. I counted eight. Their faces had been blackened by the blast," he said, before walking away. When the dead were finally taken away in an effort that lasted through the night, Sikaripara police station realised it had also lost Havildar Mohammad Shahim.

Niranjan Prasad Yadav, who was driving the bus - under which an IED went off, unlike the Tata Magic, which was shot at - escaped without any bullet injuries. "I saw the Magistrate's vehicle [Magic] ahead of me topple over. Next thing I know, the bus was lifted. I lost consciousness when it came down. I woke to the sound of guns going off and ran without looking back. I must have run two kilometres to reach the Rajbandh CRPF camp.

His weak constitution may have saved Hiralal Pal, a constable at the Town police station. "I was unconscious after the blast. Some Maoists came near me - they were only shooting at policemen - but someone lying next to me told them I was already dead," he said.

Subodh Kumar Mistry, headmaster of a middle school in Seraiyahat, said that the Maoists had taken away his money but returned an ATM card: "For a long time after the attack, someone called Amit Kumar was crying for help, saying he was badly injured. He became silent later; I think he died."

A Modi Wave in Jharkhand?

Published here
Sahibganj, April 24

As the three-phased voting in Jharkhand came to a close on Thursday, the BJP - which had won eight seats in 2009 and retains seven now - remains in contention in all 14 seats.

With the possibility of a clean sweep looming - the party won 12 in 1996 as well as '98 - state-based leaders are quick to attribute it to a "Modi Wave." The question assumes significance because of the adivasis in the state, who comprise 26.2 per cent of the population.

ADIVASIS

Have the adivasis voted for Modi? The definitive answer will come only after May 16, but even the state BJP answers in the negative. Khunti, which has the maximum proportion of adivasi population - at 73.3 per cent - might elect BJP's Kariya Munda, but its voters have done so seven times already.

A "wave" can be substantiated if the party wins in areas where it has traditionally found the going tough. In that sense, the Dumka and Rajmahal - the former a JMM stronghold, the latter, a Congress one - in the Santhal Pargana region are critical for the BJP. In both constituencies, the BJP claims "padhe-likhe" [literate, educated] Santhalis will vote for Narendra Modi. A similar claim is made by the JVM(P), which claims the padhe-likhe adivasis will vote for Babulal Marandi. Either way, a new votebank from among the adivasis - identified as the tribal middle class by anthropologists - is emerging and is up for grabs.

However, in Dumka as well as Rajmahal, the BJP depends on extraneous factors for victory. In Dumka, there is the hope that Sunil Soren, who lost to Shibu Soren by only 18,812 votes in 2009, will win when Babulal Marandi splits the JMM's Santhal-Muslim votebank. The BJP hopes to retain the diku [outisder, caste Hindu] votes and that Marandi will not eat into it. At Rajmahal, with significant number of Muslims, the party hopes that the RSS's 20-odd years of work among the Santhals have Sanskritised them enough to split the JMM votebank. Here, Narendra Modi could act as a catalyst in bringing over these Sanskritised Santhals to vote along with dikus, their former exploiters.

DALITS

In Chatra, a district where 32.6 percent of the population is Scheduled Caste, this reporter could not find any dalit at the March 27 Modi rally despite talking to about 20 people. No political party except the CPI-ML considers the dalits, 12.1 per cent of the population, as a votebank. While there seemed to be an upper caste-OBC Modi wave in Chatra, the CPI-ML's strategy seems to have paid off, as it is reportedly giving the BJP sweaty palms in Koderma, where the namesake district has only one per cent of adivasis, 15.2 per cent dalits and where Bihar-like caste politics prevail.

MUSLIMS

One of the best questions to ask voters this election was, "Why will you vote?" At Pakur district's Rahaspur village, Ashraful Haque gave the most complicated answer, "Some Muslims here might have even vote for the BJP, because only local BJP leaders help us when we go to them with our problems. But not this time. We don't want our votes to help Narendra Modi. We are scared," he said.

This fear was used by Congress's Ranchi candidate Subodh Kant Sahay, who called a meeting of Muslim mohalla leaders and managed to get an assurance of votes. The elders reportedly refused to take any gifts in return. This, despite Muslims being angry with Sahay as he did little for the evicted residents of the encroachment called Islam Nagar in Ranchi city.

A mere claim of a Modi Wave was not enough in the third phase, as Bihar-based leader Giriraj Singh's April 18 comments in Deoghar and Bokaro about Modi's opponents having to go to Pakistan was clearly intended to unite the caste Hindus in the Santhal Pargana region, with a significant Muslim population.

WHAT SHOULD A WAVE LOOK LIKE?

Ideally a wave could mean that castes and communities that stayed away in 2009 were now rooting for the BJP. There seemed to be a rural-urban divide to this: significant in Jharkhand as 76 per cent of the population lives in rural areas. In urban Jamshedpur, the trading communities and upper middle class seemed to be shifting allegiance over to the BJP after supporting the JVM's Ajay Kumar in the 2011 by-poll. The poll percentage also shot up from 51-52 in the last two elections to 65 per cent.

Except for the Telis - the caste to which Modi belongs - the BJP was not expecting any new castes from the rural areas in its bouquet. The upper caste-OBC Modi Wave in Chatra may not have been a wave, after all - they have voted for the BJP before, too. In that sense, the Modi Wave in Jharkhand was essentially a re-strengthening of the BJP's core votebanks: polarise along Hindu-Muslim fault lines and then ensure that its votebanks remained un-split and delivering maximum votes.

This fortification of votebanks was visible in Hazaribagh and Palamu, where highly-qualified candidates - Harvard graduate Jayant Sinha and former DGP V.D. Ram - had to resort to praying for a Modi Wave. Their prayers could have been answered in a literal manner, as anecdotal evidence suggests that the Ram Navami celebrations organised by Sangh Parivar organisations could have attracted voters who might have gone elsewhere. The enthusiasm around a Modi Wave visibly activated the cadres too, whose work could explain why Jamshedpur recorded an unexpectedly high turnout.

Babulal wants to knock the JMM off their perch

Published here
Sahibganj, April 22

A senior BJP leader who was out campaigning in Dumka's Santhal villages returned to recount what a villager told him when asked his thoughts on the election: "Baba ka tadi mein kangi phas gaye. [The comb is stuck in the old man's beard.]"

Outgoing Dumka MP and former chief minister Shibu Soren finds himself up against the state's first CM Babulal Marandi, MP from Koderma who decided to return to the site of his electoral debut for an endgame and whose symbol is the comb. Marandi's Jharkhand Vikas Morcha's (Prajatantrik) plans for the region go beyond the immediate concern of winning this election: the comb seems to be firmly stuck to the 70-year-old Soren's beard.

The BJP considers itself in the fight for Dumka, but it is the contest between the state's two major Santhal leaders at the heart of Santhal Pargana that holds everyone in thrall. In fact, it is precisely why the BJP thinks it stands a chance: "Billi ka ladayi mein bandar lejayega," as another BJP leader quipped.

Soren, who has contested nine times from Dumka, winning seven, retains the upper hand on paper. Marandi is no novice - he has contested four times from here, losing to Soren twice but winning twice against Guruji's family: one of his wins was against Soren's wife Rupi Kisku. Marandi made his electoral debut against Soren in 1991 and lost by 1.3 lakh votes. Dumka, though crucial, is relatively neutral territory for this battle: Soren, born in Ramgarh district, came to the Santhal Pargana in the late 1960s to lead the fight against exploitative moneylenders; Marandi, from Giridih, was sent by the RSS to establish and strengthen sakhas in the 1980s.

However, as with all epic scraps, history is for the nerds as the slate is wiped clean when the contenders circle each other. Also, circumstances have changed since Marandi's last win here, in 1999 - he left the BJP to form the JVM(P) in 2006. Now, he wants his party to replace the JMM in its stronghold, the Santhal Pargana. The act mirrors that of the BJP in 2000, when it decided not to be gracious enough to make Shibu Soren - the leader of the statehood movement - the state's first CM, instead choosing to install RSS's man Marandi.

At least etymologically, the JVM's Vikas is the next step to the JMM's Mukti, not least because the latter seems to be clueless when it comes to having a vision for the state it gave blood, sweat and tears to create. However, uprooting the JMM - even if it is on the decline - and then replacing it in the Santhal Pargana is easier said than done. Marandi will need three things - an identity, grassroots network and financial backing.

Marandi's - and by extension, the JVM's - identity is at the core of what the party wants to achieve. JVM's quest in the Santhal Pargana is also a search for its first votebank: it cannot bank anymore on the votes brought along by erstwhile BJP leaders who defected. "Babulal Marandi is not a tribal activist; he is a VHP activist," said BJP leader Saryu Rai, who nevertheless agrees that most Santhal votes will go to Marandi in a post-JMM world.

There is a feeling that his Sangh training has shorn Marandi of his Santhali identity. "Babulal is more diku than tribe," said Sanjay Basu Mallick, forest rights campaigner, referring to a term the Santhalis use to refer to the outsider. However, Mallick said that based on his interactions with Marandi, "He believes he is a true Santhal and that if elected from the Santhal Pargana, he will be the Santhal leader of Jharkhand.... At the same time, he remains reliant on the dikus [for financial backing]."

Mallick believes that Marandi's opportunity stems from a "very big tribal crisis," where there are hardly any adivasi leaders on the horizon. It also helps Marandi that unlike most other adivasi leaders of the state, he has no beginnings in the JMM. All this injects a sense of urgency in his attempt to defeat the ageing Soren: with Guruji's retirement from electoral politics a matter of constant speculation, there may not be another chance to defeat the king.

Thanks to Marandi's RSS days and BJP background, the JVM too had mostly "dikus" to begin with. So much so, anti-displacement activists of the region did not trust him completely till last year, suspecting he was a Trojan Horse for diku interests. "He made a significant move by agitating against the Panem Coal Mines in 2012. It did not make much difference to those affected by Panem, but it was symbolically loaded - as opposed to the JMM, which averted its eyes. Babulal is the first politician here to suggest land-for-land for large projects, indicating he has a vision," said an individual associated with an NGO working in the region. An unsaid promise which seems to be drawing educated youth is the implementation of a pro-tribal domicile policy, which ended Marandi's CM tenure in 2003.

Soren's once-trusted colleague Stephen Marandi, who won the seat six consecutive times before being forced out to make way for Hemant Soren's debut in 2005, has now joined Marandi after a brief exile. "Educated tribals are joining us in large numbers. Babulalji wants to nuture young leaders," said Paritosh Soren, Marandi's poll agent this time. Paritosh is one to watch out for: he gave five-time-MLA Nalin Soren a scare in JMM's stronghold Sikaripara in the 2009 assembly polls; losing by 1052 votes.

Marandi himself is not forthcoming about the identity he wants to project. "I want to be the leader of the poor," he said in an interview given in an antetoom of his Dumka campaign office. When prodded, he opened up further. "The tribals are the most poor; 20 to 25 lakhs have been displaced. So, the fight for the poor essentially becomes a fight for tribals," he said. Then, he said something that revealed the scale of his ambitions, "Nobody has dared to make a clear stand on displacement. Make me Prime Minister; I will show you how to compensate with land for land." Behind him, a campaign poster featured a man in a topi: Marandi refuses to discuss his RSS days and talks as if 2006 was a clean break, since when he has made significant efforts to reach out to the Muslims.

All over the Santhal Pargana, there is an eye out for early 2010, when the state will vote to elect members to its assembly. Getting the adivasi group that constitutes more than a third of all adivasis in the state on his side is critical to Babulal Marandi's efforts to becoming the Chief Minister again. He certainly cannot replicate the near-spiritual connection that the Santhals have with Shibu Soren; Marandi needs to find a language to get through to his own people.