Bihar Elections 2015 – A View beyond Politics

Lalu Prasad Yadav and Nitish Kumar have shared success in the recent Bihar assembly elections.  Sonia Gandhi and Rahul Gandhi have tagged along.  Narendra Modi has lost.  But a worrying signal comes from India’s voters in Bihar, and that has nothing to do with the political merits of these players.

You know the figures in the results. Out of 243 seats in the state legislature, Lalu Prasad Yadav’s party RJD topped with 80.  Among the remaining ones, 71 went to Nitish Kumar’s JD(U), 53 to Narendra Modi’s BJP and 27 to the Congress while others took 12. 

          Lalu Prasad was not a candidate in the elections.  In Sept. 2013 he was convicted by a special CBI court in Ranchi for offences including one under the Prevention of Corruption Act, in a fodder scam case, and later sentenced to prison for five years. With that punishment, he stood barred by law from contesting elections to a state assembly or to Parliament for that term plus six years – for eleven years in all.  But even during the barred period he is free to canvass for anyone in an election.  So he led his party and campaigned for the coalition of RJD, JD(U) and Congress.

          Look at the law, Lalu Prasad and democracy.  He won.  Those who voted for and elected his party candidates did so thanks to his word and presence, aided by Nitish Kumar.  Aligning with Lalu, Nitish also has won.  Staying with them, the Congress too benefited.  What does the picture reveal if you look closely?

          Lalu Prasad had appealed to the High Court against the lower court’s judgement convicting him.  His appeal was yet to be heard when the Bihar polls were announced.  But he had come out on bail, campaigned in the elections and has bagged the largest number of seats for any party in the new state assembly.  This shows one thing.  People who would have voted Lalu Prasad in 2015 if there were no corruption case against him have stood by his party even after a court found him guilty of corruption, and on his prodding have voted for his ally Nitish Kumar and his party too.  Other voters who essentially support Nitish Kumar, a leader perceived clean, have now voted for his new ally Lalu Prasad’s party too.

          I am not commenting on the change of heart among political leaders at election time when they strike alliances – like the convicted Lalu Prasad and a cleaner Nitish Kumar coming together in Bihar this year, though Lalu had called Nitish earlier in a court proceeding as the former’s ‘greatest enemy’.  Many political leaders make similar strange alliances between their parties during elections, having described each other in choice phrases earlier.  I wish to say a little about another thing happening amidst all this.

 

Getting an accused convicted in an Indian criminal court is quite a hard thing to do, since the law has strict norms for proving an offence beyond reasonable doubt.  It is doubly difficult when we have puppeteer politicians and a de-professionalised servient police force.  Since any chief minister has inherent pulls and pressures of all sorts, a corruption case against him or her has even more hurdles to cross.  Still Lalu Prasad was convicted in such a case in 2013 and now his party has won more than any other in Bihar elections.

Indians, whether educated or not, know that a politician gets things done or undone.  They generally have a good respect for courts, more than they have for other official agencies or functionaries.  So what do you make out if the same people, just two years after a court convicts a chief minister in a corruption case, hugely vote for his party in the state polls?  Bihar voters would not, by a deliberate choice, have suspended their personal opinions of Lalu Prasad’s guilt or innocence till the High Court decides his appeal and also till the Supreme Court has the final say.  None of us know how the two superior courts will decide this case.  That question was probably never also in the minds of the people who voted in Bihar as Lalu wanted them to.

Forget Lalu Prasad Yadav and his party.  What happened in Bihar could be the scene in a few other states with X or Y as its former or serving chief minster convicted for corruption.  If people ignore a court verdict on corruption against a chief minister and elect candidates of his party in largest number so soon after his conviction, that too on his campaigning, it means a feeble democracy is at work. Probably, people in that territory feel safer to remain restrained and bound than to feel free and go by a valued court verdict.

Any convicted minister or chief minister has his or her rights of appeal, and that is to be respected.  But so long as a court’s positive finding on corruption against a politician stands then, unless it evokes informed widespread suspicion, he or she should fear steep erosion in people’s support as a direct result of such a verdict if – but only if - the public have real awareness.   

So in Bihar the real sad spectacle is the people failing themselves against corruption – i.e., by not letting their votes speak against that malady which a court trial earlier highlighted.  I am sure Lalu Prasad, Nitish Kumar and Rahul Gandhi will agree with this view on principle and also say it aloud if, instead of Bihar, Gujarat has now a former chief minister convicted for corruption by a district-level criminal court and two years later that person goes on to win elections in that state.

But the people of Bihar are our people, and democracy in that region cannot succeed without them.  So let us wish – which is the best we can do right now - that they will in quicker time become more aware and wield  the weapon in their hands, the ballot, so politicians fear to take voters for granted and would mostly check themselves when governing.

Now, we may also answer a possible pretentious moral question.  A chief minister convicted on a corruption charge could well ask: “Isn’t it unfair if my political rival in another party, who is equally corrupt, escapes by luck a prosecution or court’s finding of corruption, but I get caught by bad luck and suffer a judicial verdict?  Why should I come to pay for a mischance and my opponent enjoy good fortune and go scot-free?”   A conscious people should respond: “We can’t let off the second thief in our homes because the first one escaped with his booty”.

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Copyright © R. Veera Raghavan 2015