SAMASTIPUR: A few hundreds had gathered for BJP chief Amit Shah’s public meeting at the Samastipur airfield. Strength of the Shah rally was, however, no indicator of which way the wind was blowing.
For the BJP candidates, it’s the ‘motorcycle rally’, cavalcades of young men in saffron bandanas with lotus prints and blaring music, that get them the voters’ attention. The votes come with harder work, sessions in the evenings at village courtyards where sundry issues are explained, like why PM Modi has to go abroad so often—“not for holidaying but to get investments” without which apparently “there would be no jobs for the youth in Bihar”. “They explain it very well, it becomes easy to understand. Every point raised by Nitish-Lalu, BJP comes out with a clarification,” says Sanjay Kumar, who runs a chemist shop.
Young Hasina, buying medicines for her mother from the same shop, buts in: “Here only the arrow will work.”
Arrow is the JD(U) symbol. Whether it is Hasina or Salim Ali or Naushad, there’s no doubt which button on the EVM they will press: “We’re for the Grand Alliance.” They have not even heard of Asaduddin Owaisi or MIM.
The ‘M’ of Lalu Prasad’s famous M-Y (Muslim-Yadav) is going nowhere from the Grand Alliance, they add in unison.
But the same cannot be said about ‘Y’ though. Can the Yadav desert Lalu? Is that possible?
In Chakpahari, a series of hamlets of Yadav heavyweights, a new combination is crystallising. The Yadav men sit with their Rajput neighbours to share the afternoon tea and stories of Mahabharata—how the ancient Hindu sagas offered animals to gods but then revived them back to life with supernatural powers.
Lalu, they allege, is meeting too many budhijeevis (intellectuals) these days and no longer believes in the power of “our ancient sagas. We are Jaduvanshis, we know”.
Their newfound friends, Rajbhan and Lalan Singh, nod. They are Raghuvansh babu’s men (ex-Union Minister and RJD leader Raghuvansh Prasad), but this time they will vote for the Yadav candidate BJP has put up and not the Mallar—extremely backward (EBC)—candidate of JD(U).
“Will Lalu and Nitish come to protect us, if our villages burn? Our local problems are ours. We can’t transfer our votes to aati-pichra (EBC),” says a Yadav elder. The EBCs, particularly the women in the adjoining hamlet of Chakshikandar, say it does not matter what the Yadavs do. “Even the Paswans here will vote for Nitish. In any case, there will still be some Yadav who won’t leave Lalu, come what may,” says Savitri Devi, a Paswan herself.
None of the Manjhi households—elders with glazed eyes and children with swollen stomachs and poverty writ all over them—have decided yet. Nitish gave them free medicines, but Modi may give free bikes.
“We vote for the winning candidates,” says Rajin Manjhi. Well, which means the fate of the candidates in many of the 49 constituencies going to poll on October 12 will depend on a last-minute choice. That’s such a close fight.