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Indrajit Roy: Lalu Yadav's achievements in developing Bihar cannot be overlooked

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Indrajit Roy: Lalu Yadav's achievements in developing Bihar cannot be overlooked Empty Indrajit Roy: Lalu Yadav's achievements in developing Bihar cannot be overlooked

Post by Guest Mon Nov 09, 2015 1:09 pm

While it has now become a cliché to condemn Lalu Prasad Yadav for presiding over Bihar’s alleged descent into ‘casteist’ lawlessness from 1990 to 2005, his achievements cannot be overlooked. Lalu’s rule instilled a sense of social confidence among the vast majority of the state’s labouring and impoverished people, chiefly of the Backward Castes and Dalits. He shifted primary schools hitherto located in ‘savarna’ neighbourhoods into Dalit and Backward Caste hamlets. Hindu-Muslim riots were rare. He reined in police intervention when Dalit landless labourers occupied properties illegally held by landlords in violation of ceiling acts.

Lalu was less successful in preventing atrocities by the Ranvir Sena and other savarna militias on Dalits and Backward Castes. The violence perpetrated by these militias reflected their reaction to assertions by subaltern groups demanding fairness in social and economic transactions, assertions that were bolstered by Lalu’s ascension in Patna. His political rhetoric underpinning social dignity bolstered the morale of the impoverished mass of rural Bihar in quite considerable, and somewhat unpredictable ways.

Against his critics accusing him of not doing enough for development, Lalu claimed in the early 1990s:

‘Vikas nahin, samman chahiye’ (we want dignity, not development)’

His messages live on in ways he might not have predicted. It is common for researchers to hear – as I did – from impoverished, often Dalit, women in the Bihar countryside:

‘Vikas hua hai, badlaw aaya hai. Abhi hum jamindar ke ankhon mein ankh daal kar barabari se bat kar saktey hain. (Development has taken place. Change has happened. Today, we can look the landlord in the eye and speak as equals)’

Even as he ostensibly ignored development, Lalu’s political symbolism quite considerably improved the development capabilities of Bihar’s rural population. Indeed, he appears to have anticipated nearly a quarter of a century ago the recognition, recently expressed in the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals, that the dignity of the human person is fundamental. Seen in this light, the contribution of the RJD’s 15-year rule cannot be undermined. The achievements under Nitish Kumar’s decade-long rule would not have been possible without the foundations laid by Lalu. Bihar’s long-oppressed population began to reconfigure the meaning of development as dignity.

http://thewire.in/2015/11/09/why-development-in-bihar-is-about-social-justice-15291/

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