Sharique N Siddiquie
Anger over ‘Bihari’
Even though Bihari was essentially used for Lord Krishna, the Kalyuga has changed it into a virtual swear word. It all started with Raj Thackeray led MNS spearheading a tirade against north Indian migrants in Mahrashtra. They started beating up north Indian students, especially from Bihar and Uttar Pradesh who went there to appear in recruitment exams.
The repercussions didn’t take much time as a Bihari youth Rahul Raj tried to hijack a BEST bus in Mumbai over gun point to protest over the ill treatment meted out to Biharis in the state. The state police gunned him down and whole of north India erupted in anger.
If this was the story on the western front of the country, the eastern front was also not lagging behind. The ULFA militants gunned down several Bihari migrant labourers as act of utter cowardice. Even at the end of the year, Madhya Pradesh Chief Minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan stirred the same controversy by saying that Biharis are not welcome in his state, though later he backtracked from his statement.
With the situation continues to remain fragile for Biharis across the country; it seems that the rise of Bihari nationalism on the lines of Maharashtra seems inevitable very soon.
Lalu-Paswan back to basics
The political scenario in Bihar has always been very in interesting but this year it surpassed all set trends. The mighty Ram Vilas Paswan lost Khagaria, the constituency where he had won by an astronomical margin once that placed him in Guiness Book of World Records. Also, Lalu Prasad Yadav’s RJD continued its poor run from assembly elections to Lok Sabha polls and failed miserably.
The dominating and people friendly persona of Nitish Kumar forced both the leaders to get their basics right and connect to the masses for which they had become elusive figure in recent years. So, they went back to where they belong, the common people of Bihar and this turnaround brought immediate gains as both RJD and LJP fared pretty well in assembly by-polls in the state.
