For a generation of urban Indians, Lalu Prasad Yadav was the very epitome of the Indian Politician: larger than life, determinedly rustic, making the news with his quotable comments, and, depending on which side you were on, either a charlatan out for personal gain, or a messiah of the downtrodden masses. Although his star is on the wane now, his name is still very much recognised—probably more so than any other politician from Bihar. Where did this man come from, starting from a village and becoming a state chief minister and later Railways Minister? Yadav himself tells his story now, in this memoir, Gopalganj to Raisina, written along with Nalin Verma.
Yadav starts off by telling us about his childhood as a poor farmer’s son in a Bihar village. These were the humblest of beginnings, and he is candid enough to talk of all the difficulties his people faced. Sending young Lalu to school in the village and thence to Patna, was a big thing for the family to achieve. In Patna, Yadav stayed in the workers’ quarters along with his elder brothers. His tendency to be a mass leader shows up even in these days: girls go to him complaining of eve teasers, and he administers rough justice to fix the latter.
His political journey begins with student politics in college in Patna, but is soon merged into Jayaprakash Narayan’s Sampoorna Kranti (Total Revolution) movement, which arose in Bihar against the Congress party’s rule. Yadav recounts his rise to a leadership position in this movement, until he was popular enough to be elected to the Lok Sabha at the age of 29.
Thereafter he talks of how the Janata Party emerged and then splintered, along with his creation of the Rashtriya Janata Dal, a party he leads to the present day. Eventually, he casts his lot with the Congress (the party he opposed in order to win his first victories), while explaining how his political rival, Nitish Kumar, is “not a trustworthy man”.
Details of Yadav’s own journey may be new, but his brand of socialism will sound very familiar to older readers. From the beginning, his focus is on redistributing the available wealth to underprivileged sections of society. Getting houses built for poor folks, starting express trains titled “Garib Raths” as Railways Minister, distributing money for post-flood reconstruction—these ideas sound like exactly what government priorities used to be like before the liberalisation and capacity creation initiatives of the early 90s. It is understandable why (even apart from the corruption charges) Yadav’s brand of politics has been falling out of favour.
Yadav’s downfall, in his own words, is a case of vendetta of the establishment against an upstart. The Fodder Scam, as he tells it, was an ongoing government officials scam that he himself tried to expose but was caught up in. Rabri Devi’s selection as Chief Minister was something the whole party wanted, not him alone. His sons are in politics now having proved their ability by themselves without any favouritism. And so on.
In order to appreciate this book, one needs to separate out the persona from the storytelling. There will be few Lalu fans reading this book in today’s world. However, the way in which the story is told, the organisation of the “plot” and the steady build-up towards the career high points is excellently done. Credit must be given to Nalin Verma (and the editors) for the organisation and presentation of the book.
Verma opts to use a relatively simple English throughout, but bring in common Hindi and Bihari sentences every once in a while to remind readers that the original sentences are in those languages. Yadav’s insistence on using political cliches like “oppressed classes”, “feudal sections of society”, and so on, make it seem like a rally speech. This is one of the more interesting political stories to come out of the Hindi heartland.
Gopalganj to Raisina
By: Lalu Prasad Yadav
Publisher: Rupa
Pages: 256
Price: `500