Despite his surrender to the CBI (Laloo) continues to rule Bihar by proxy. Moreover, despite his arrest and the political inexperience of his wife, his party, the RJD, appears firmly united behind him. From the beginning of the CBI probe, he dominated the proceedings. He broke the JD leaving it without a mass base, won Kesri and a faction of the JMM to his side and stumped his opponents by making his wife lead a RJD government in Bihar. Can you remember a single politician in recent times who has turned the tables on his adversaries as swiftly and decisively as Laloo Yadav ?.
In Bihar many people still admire Laloo Yadav for a variety of reasons. In the rest of the country he has become a hated man. But his importance lies in the face that he cannot be ignored even as he rules Bihar from custody ... (Those are) three acts. The first displays the attitude of the Congress towards him. The second exposes the sanctimoniousness of the CPI-M ... And the third highlights the usual irresolution of the UF government. However, the play as a whole has buttressed ... Laloo Yadav and the RJD.
The Congress, prone to greater Mandalisation pressures under Kesri, has always been ambivalent towards corruption and this ambivalence has been translated into its support of the RJD ministry in Bihar ... It has propped up the RJD for obvious reasons. The Congress feels that despite the recent setbacks Laloo Yadav remains, perhaps, the only charismatic mass leader in Bihar. He has also proved to be a formidable opponent of the Hindutva forces. As a Yadav leader of social justice par excellence he might yet emerge as the biggest vote catcher against the Leftists and other Centrists opposed to the Congress in the next Lok Sabha polls.
Furthermore, if Laloo is found innocent by the courts before the next elections, his popular appeal will grow tremendously. But even if Laloo is in jail during the next Lok Sabha polls there are sufficient grounds to assume that a Congress-RJD alliance will give its enemies on the Right and Left a run for their money. In short, therefore, a Congress hoping to rule from the Centre once again is supporting the RJD to simultaneously check the BJP, Leftists and the JD in Bihar.
Having projected him as the secular alternative in Bihar for long ... the CPI-M's sudden dislike of Laloo Yadav has little to do with corruption or criminalisation of politics. It is predicated instead upon his image amongst the largely upper caste bhadralok and the intention to poach on his mass base with the help of Dalit leaders ... Furthermore the CPI-M does not want anything to upset its plans of promoting Mulayam Singh Yadav as the Champion of Secularism in north India. With Laloo Yadav behind bars, the RJD hopefully decimated and Mulayam busy fighting the BJP (CPI(M)'s leaders can continue their backseat driving in New Delhi with the help of an eternally vacillating prime minister. Hence an unstable Centrist coalition at the Centre will continue to give the CPI-M power without responsibility.
This leaves the problematic of Centrist politics unaddressed. At least the Congress and CPI-M have a strategy relating to Laloo Yadav but what do the Centrists, led by the JD'.,. have? As usual, nothing. For the moment the Gowda camp has triumphed against Laloo Yadav but at terminal cost to the JD. Not only have Gowda, Paswan and Co. driven Laloo Yadav decisively into the arms of the Congress, but they have also managed to reduce the JD to shadow of its former self in the citadel of social justice ...
Premier Gujral's failure to take a stand on Laloo Yadav will not be forgotten ... by his friends and critics ... In 1997 it is intellectually fashionable to wax eloquent on the new age of coalition and the maturity of democratic politics in India but as Laloo episode shows ... the armchair theory of coalitions is far removed from its ... futile and intractable practical contradictions. (Source: The Hindustan Times, 12 September, 1997)
