Jehanabad (Bihar): Almost 50 families, all of whom are landless agricultural workers, in Mathiyapar look at every visitor with a sliver of hope. “Have you come to check on our electricity,” Usha Devi, in her fifties, curiously asks. Her question immediately draws her daughter, her daughter-in-law, and her six-year-old child to the door, each of them trying to find an end to their life in the dark.
Around two months ago, the Panchayat office sent an official to cut off the electricity lines after most families failed to pay their bills that have run into thousands of rupees. Upon knowing that I was a reporter, she launched a scathing attack against the state government. “Look at our bill, it shows that I need to pay Rs 45,000 to get our electricity restored. How are we supposed to pay, when we have absolutely no income,” she says.
Usha Devi’s husband can’t work; he has developed a disability in his leg in the last two years. Her son works as a driver in Surat, while his wife and child are in the village. He barely saves enough to send any money to her mother, making Usha Devi and her daughter the only earning members to care for their family.
But her earnings, too, do not come as wages, but as a portion of the paddy that she helps grow in her landlord’s farms. “We get work only for about two months in a year when paddy is grown. The zamindar gives us six kilograms of rice for every day’s work in bataai (a system where the landowner shares part of the harvest with the tenant farmer),” Usha Devi says.
“When we were given electricity connections around a year ago, we were told that the bill would not be more than 100 rupees. But around three months ago, the officials came to install electricity meters and all of us here got these bills that we won’t be able to pay ever,” her daughter Rashmi, who has quit studies to help her mother, says.
Mathiyapar’s lush green, clean surroundings have hidden away many such stories of its residents. As soon as Usha Devi began speaking, many other women in her neighbourhood gathered around with similar electricity bills that they received. Almost all of them ran into five figures.
A woman in Mathiyapar showing her steep electricity bill. Photo: Ajoy Ashirwad Mahaprashasta
“The government has left us to die in this heat,” said Bimla Devi, before taking the government head-on.
“There are schools here, but no teachers; dispensaries but no doctor or compounder. The Panchayat office is hijacked by Pradhan’s aides. If at all MGNREGA work opens up, the Panchayat takes days to pay us,” she says.
“There is no work; our boys have no option but to go to cities like Surat and Chennai to find some work. Even though they earn around Rs 500-600 per day, the cost of living there is so high,” Shiv Dayal Mahato says.
“If Nitish’s candidate comes to campaign this time, we will drive him away with sticks. He was nowhere to be seen in the last five years. Only we know how we survived the lockdown without any help from him or his aides,” Mahato says.
“We plan to vote NOTA this time around, as we don’t want to vote for the RJD that only listens to the Yadavs. Or, perhaps, we will see if there is any third candidate,” he adds.
Anger against incumbent MP
Mathiyapaar is almost entirely filled with Kurmi residents, a caste group that has been loyal to the chief minister Nitish Kumar, who, too, belongs to the community. Yet, a unanimous anger against the incumbent MP, Chandreshwar Prasad from Nitish Kumar’s Janata Dal (United), appeared to hold political opinion in the locality, among both landlords and agricultural workers.
Economic distress writ large among not only Kurmis but almost every community. An agrarian crisis that has resulted in depreciating incomes, lack of any planned irrigation, stagnant wages for workers over the last few years, and joblessness among the youth have become burning issues in Jehananad, which was once a hotbed of Naxalite activity.
Kurmi peasants in Mathiyapa. Photo: Ajoy Ashirwad Mahaprashasta
Caste-based atrocities and feudal exploitation resulted in a war-like situation between Dalits and Bhumihar landlords, with intermediary castes often finding themselves in a dilemma to choose sides. However, when Nitish Kumar first came to power with a majority in November 2005, he showed the country a different way to mitigate Left Wing Extremism.
Unlike the BJP-led state government in Chhattisgarh which entirely relied on military aggression against Naxalites, Nitish Kumar understood the deep chasms within the society and initiated a number of social sector reforms in Jehanabad. He revamped schools and health centres, rural roads, began scholarships for girl students, gave them bicycles to ride, and cleaned up the corrupt, ‘upper caste ’-driven local governance models and democratised participation in decision-making.
The fruit of his efforts showed gradually in a few years. Violent Naxalism began to wane, elevating Nitish Kumar to the stature of a national leader.
Jehanabad, on the other hand, continued to be seen as a success story as the JD(U)’s electoral dominance over these parts remained unmistakable. However, the mainstreaming over time had also invisibilised brewing livelihood issues in the region.
With an under-construction four-lane national highway passing through the town and adjoining villages, it still appears prosperous in Bihar. But the numerous unorganised and temporary Dalit settlements along the highway and along the railway lines makes you stare out of that success story. The EBC tolas, which remain within the perimeters of the village, also equal their Dalit counterparts in abysmally poor sanitation, roads, and education levels, and mirror a history of deep social and economic inequality in the region. Those age-old fissures are being voiced loudly and clearly in the run-up to the election campaign. They showed up prominently in the 2020 assembly polls when the JD(U)-BJP combine couldn’t win even one of the six assembly segments that make up the Lok Sabha seat.
Jehanabad was now growing out of the success story that it represented after nearly two decades.
Twenty years down the line, Nitish finds himself in a situation where his efforts to bring peace to the region have been forgotten and the people of Jehanabad have come to believe that their concerns have been left unattended.
Nitish, however, has once again passed the baton in Jehanabad to the EBC leader Chandreshwar Prasad, who belongs to the Chandravanshi community. The anger against him showed even in 2019 when he edged past his RJD rival Surendra Prasad Yadav by a narrow margin of 1,751 votes.
A triangular contest
Around five kilometers away in the Jehanabad market, people didn’t shy away from making their anger evident against Prasad. Jaideep Kumar, a Bhumihar, says, “You won’t find anyone apart from his caste members who will have anything positive to say about Prasad.”
“People will vote for change here,” says Suresh Yadav, a sugarcane juice seller. “RJD missed a chance last time but it will surely win as it will also get the committed votes from maaley (colloquial term for Communist Party of India (ML-Liberation) which is a part of the INDIA bloc).”
A Dalit voter Rupesh agrees. “We do not have any particular preference here. But since Tejashwi (Yadav) is speaking about jobs, I want to vote for the RJD.”
Similarly, a college-going Sneha Mishra, who was with a group of friends, says, “The MP barely came down to Jehanabad. He is from Patna, and did not care about us.”
However, she praised Nitish Kumar in the same breath, only to be interrupted by her friend Mitali, “He should not be changing sides all the time.”
Mitali belongs to the Kurmi community, and like her even the Kurmi residents of Mathiyapar feel anxious about Nitish Kumar’s decline. “Kabhi Idhar, Kabhi Udhar. Aise thodi na hota hai. Naam kharab kar liya. (He is here and then there. Does it happen like this? He has brought a bad name for himself),” says Usha Devi.
For almost two years, Nitish’s switch to the INDIA bloc made Kurmis and other EBCs listen to criticisms of the Narendra Modi government, about problems like unemployment, price rise, and issues like caste census and greater representation for the OBCs. But as the elections approached, Nitish’s exit from INDIA only left his followers confused about their political loyalty. But the issues that the INDIA bloc raised continue to be dominant concerns, even as his adherents feel orphaned.
By repeating the unpopular candidate in Jehanabad against a formidable RJD candidate Surendra Prasad Yadav, Nitish may have touched a raw nerve in Jehanabad.
Speaking with The Wire, Prasad exuded confidence. “I am fully confident.” When asked about the perceptible anger against his alleged absenteeism, he said, “That is a non-issue. There is so much work that Narendra Modi ji has done in the area. This election is not about me or anyone else but about giving another term to Modi ji.”
Prasad has attempted to beat anti-incumbency by promoting ‘Brand Modi’ in the 2024 elections. But his RJD rival has not missed a chance to drum up Prasad’s absence in the constituency, while raising economic concerns of people vigorously. Moreover, queering the pitch for Prasad is former MP (2014-19) Arun Kumar, who is contesting as a Bahujan Samaj Party candidate.
A large section of Bhumihars showed their inclination towards voting for Arun Kumar, who also belongs to the community. Arun Kumar is also banking on getting support from Dalits and Kurmis, who feel disgruntled with Prasad. A triangular contest is most probable as a result. Since both Bhumihars and Kurmis have been traditional BJP-JD(U) voters, Arun Kumar may end up undercutting Prasad and handing an edge to the RJD’s Surendra Prasad Yadav.
Jehanabad will vote on June 1 in the last of the seven phases. Irrespective of such caste-based equations, the electoral contest is being held around issues of widespread economic distress among commoners that is all pervasive in Bihar. Their suffering becomes all the more striking when a majority of the television media cheer Modi’s sankalp of transforming India into the third-largest economy in the world and speak about a Viksit Bharat.
