Amulya Ganguli, Asst. Editor, The Hindustan Times, New Delhi

Once again the Hindi heartland has come to India's rescue. The last time it saved the country from Indira Gandhi's' tryst with fascism was in 1977 when the Congress did not win a single seat from Bihar and Uttar Pradesh. Now Bihar has put a spoke in the wheels of an even more dangerous variety of politics – religious fundamentalism - by denying a satisfying performance to the saffron camp. Earlier, in the parliamentary polls, UP had also shown that its approval of the BJP was not as whole-hearted as before.

The BJP's problem is that it will now be under pressure from three sides. On one side will be the new assertive regional satraps like Chautala and Patnaik who, like Chandrababu Naidu, Mamata Banerjee and Karunanidhi, can claim to have emerged as influential political figures in their own right who will no longer be as beholden to the BJP as before. On the second side will the disgruntled allies in the Samata party and Janata Dal (United) who may begin to wonder whether they are not harming themselves by aligning with the Hindutva lobby ...

Misgivings ... are likely to make them somewhat prickly companions for the BJP, which may also begin to wonder about the usefulness of such unreliable political weathercocks ... (An) ideology (will) fascistic overtones ...

That the hard-liners were already becoming impatient was evident ... (When) even Vajpayee had to request the Parivar to observe a Lakshman rekha so that the Government is not embarrassed ...

But the Bihar results have shown that not only will the BJP ever reach the cherished goal of coming to power at the Centre on its own, even its allies may either slowly begin to drift away or increasingly become less dependent on Big Brother. Evidently, then, the prospect of a Hindu rashtra will remain a distant dream. But that is not something which the Sangh Parivar can accept with equanimity. After all, it has waited for seven decades since the formation of the RSS to reach the present stage where success was seemingly within sniffing distance.

What is more, its hidden agenda is now an open one and no one, least of all the minorities, is in any doubt as to what it stands for. Besides, its earlier reputation of being a disciplined organisation, comprising people of integrity, has also been shattered. Earlier, the Congress was known as corrupt and the BJP as communal. Now the BJP is known both as corrupt and communal.

For the Hindutva lobby, therefore, it has become a now or never situation. It has to get to the top at one go because its agenda is so contentious that the BJP cannot afford to follow the customary meandering political process ... But that is not how the BJP functions. Its real policies are always kept partly under cover.

When the impatient kar sevaks exposed the real agenda in December 1992, the BJP became the untouchable of Indian politics ... which compelled it to abandon (of) contentious ... programme for the same of winning greater political acceptability. The retreat was a wise move. But (it) was a preparation for a leap forward. At least the hard-liners so believed. But if the political retreat becomes electoral, the party may not be able to withstand the resultant internal strains. (Source: The Hindustan Times, 6 March, 2000)

K. Balchand On Bihar Assembly Election, 2000

The Assembly elections have proved (that) single-handedly (Laloo) inflicted one of the most cruel blows to his detractors and asserted his supremacy in the State.

Despite suffering some losses, Mr. Yadav successfully led his party to emerge as the single largest (party) which commands the largest following in Bihar. It wasn't only the masses that rallied behind him; there were other circumstances that worked in his favour ...

(It became a) question of survival, be it for the minorities, Dalits or a section of the upper castes. The people seemed to settle for the alleged "jungle raj" of the RJD rather than the "maha-jungle raj" that members of the BJP- led NDA had let loose.

The strategy of the BJP and its. allies ... to wrest power solely on the strength of "criminal" elements came a cropper. This underscored the limitations of the BJP and its partners ... The combine's hunger for power was not backed by the necessary camaraderie, both at the organisational level and at the individual level, creating bad blood right down to the grassroot level.

The advancement of the elections proved detrimental to the NDA more than the ruling RJD. It stalled the merger of the Samata Party with the JD(U) and gave little time for the alliance partners to sort out the thorny issue of seat- sharing, which ... was no more than partial; and this too was announced after the expiry of withdrawals for the first phase and just a day ahead of the last date of filing nominations for the second phase. This worked to the advantage of Mr. Yadav ... Mr. Yadav cleverly exploited the weakness in the NDA camp by leading the party from the front with the motive of exposing the fight within the combine and its failure to project a leader.

The NDA prospect was also hampered by the fact that with none in command, ticket distribution was done in an haphazard manner distancing several caste groups in their areas of dominance. The NDA ended up as a case of too many cooks spoiling the broth.

In his isolation, Mr. Yadav drew strength from the dispersed secular forces which successfully attacked the NDA from all sides. The Congress(I) and the Left parties attacked the NDA more than the RJD which blunted the NDA's attack against it.

The NDA's repeated hammering of its slogan of "jungle raj" and the alleged unparliamentary language used by some of its leaders against Mr. Yadav also had their own negative effect ... Mr. Yadav successfully projected himself as the martyr being hounded for championing the cause of the downtrodden. It is also true that there was none in the NDA to match his tenacity and determination addressing no less than 200 meetings. (Source: The Hindu, 27 February, 2000)

V. Krishna Ananth On Social Churning in Bihar

The Laloo era witnessed much social churning, pushing the traditional rulers - the land-owning Bhumihars and the Rajputs - to the margins ... (Yet) the concept of land to the tiller was a far cry throughout these ten years: Social justice was reduced by Mr. Laloo Yadav to a mere slogan. This was the period when the notorious Ranbir Sena, the private army. of the landowning Bhumihars and the Rajputs, was born in Bhojpur (in 1993) ... That the state machinery under Mr. Yadav failed to even apprehend the killers is a tell-tale comment on the reality that prevails in Bihar ...

(For) Laloo Yadav ... social justice began and stopped with "empowering" the intermediate castes (the Yadavs, Kurmis and Koeris). The Bhumihar-Rajput contractor lobby was replaced with Yadavs and other intermediate castes ...

But the social churning initiated by the socialists in Bihar, based on the foundations laid by the powerful peasant movements ... forced the landlords to leave their lands behind with the tenants (belonging to the intermediate castes) and "settle down" in Patna. Here they managed to obtain civil contracts and also manipulate the state apparatus through their kith and kin who had by then entrenched themselves in the bureaucracy. Young boys, sons of rich landlords, were sent across to Delhi and other places for "better education" and thus managed to corner a chunk of postings in the IAS and IPS and were able to return to Bihar and control the civil administration.

It was this Congress(I)-managed balance that was disturbed by ... the implementation of the Mandal Commission recommendations. And Mr. Laloo Yadav as Chief Minister would confer IAS and IPS on men belonging to the intermediate castes and ensure that they were placed alongside the direct recruits (mostly from the upper castes) so that the administrative set up was not reduced into "their" private fiefdoms.

Thus began the process by which the Bhumihars and Rajputs were edged out of the category called civil contractors ... Laloo's inner circle (stepped in). These contracts simply meant money-making enterprises and their "services" were expected at times of elections. It is this process - set rolling in the beginning of the Nineties, reaching its peak by 1995 - that now stands shaken.

:.. The complete lack of any developmental activity and the oppressive social order that still prevails leave Bihar on the brink of another kind of social churning ... rendering parts of Bihar into strong centres of influence for extreme-Left platforms such as the CPI(ML-Liberation), the Maoist Coordination Committee (MCC) and the People's War Group.

Laloo's Last Laugh - Editorial, The Times of India, 28 Feb., 2000

Not for nothing is Laloo Prasad Yadav a phenomenon. Pundits and psephologists wrote his epitaph, his opponents threatened to wound him, burn him and sink him in the Bay of Bengal ... Mr. Yadav was all alone in an election where the other side constituted a magnificent union of bigwigs ... The NDA dazzled the voters with the colour and spectacle of its campaign; on show were the dozen-odd central ministers from Bihar, the prime minister and Bollywood cinestars, all of whom criss-crossed the state in helicopters ...

The best that Mr. Yadav was offered, by his own associates, was a 100 seats ... Nevertheless, defying all predictions of a resounding rout, Mr. Yadav has returned to haunt his enemies, 'and with numbers that could once again place him in the chief-ministerial chair ... Mr. Yadav's vote base has remained intact for over a decade through times good and bad in a state notorious for its instability ...

... Bihar was nothing short of a war for the Vajpayee government ... In the end, the one-point mission failed - .and for the reason that it was a one-point mission. The NDA had no programme other than to replace Mr. Yadav. As a consequence, the different constituents did not gel together ... Second, the fact that the BJP's hidden agenda was no longer hidden. Minorities and other vulnerable sections - who stand to lose the most in a communally surcharged environment - voted with a vengeance against the BJP. The moral of elections-2000 is inescapable: It is not enough for the leopard to talk about changing its spots, it must deliver on the promise.