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BJP banks on Modi factor, schemes to retain Bihar seat
A total sum of ₹1,417 crore has been given as bank credit in East Champaran under the livelihood programme, said government figures.
Two men carry Sangeeta Devi’s latest possession, a metre-long drone, to a small field in Jiwdhara village for a brief demonstration. A crowd of children and adults quickly gathers around her as Sangeeta, one of the two “drone didis”of the East Champaran district, fidgets with the controls to fly the “Namo Drone” for wonderstruck villagers.
Forty kilometres away, Kiran Devi has a story of transformation too. A housewife busy in daily chores in Madhuban, Kiran managed a government credit of ₹10 lakh in 2019 to set up her tiny food processing unit. “Now, I earn ₹30,000-40,000 every month. I even employ five-six women from my village,” she said at her factory — a pucca house in front of her home.
Her husband, Mohan Prasad, left his job of supplying cakes in Delhi and now helps his wife sell pickles, multigrain atta and Bengal gram flour across the state.
Similar beneficiaries and success stories can be found all across East Champaran, one of the poorest districts of Bihar. The livelihood schemes, coupled with the Union government’s free foodgrain programme that started during Covid-19, have set parallel narratives of welfare in this election season in Bihar.
At Kauriya village, Ragini Kumar, a college student, manages a multi-purpose service centre of the Central Bank of India. With no other bank branches nearby, the service centre is a one-stop shop for bank deposits, withdrawals and subscribing to the government’s insurance or pension schemes.
“I am educated. I took a short training course and started this job. In this far-flung area, monthly transactions amount to ₹30-35 lakh,” Ragini says.
At a Mahadalit village in Naurangia, signs of multidimensional poverty are everywhere. Most young men have migrated to bigger cities. The village has few pucca houses and fewer toilets.
Indu Devi, a farm labourer turned cosmetics trader, lives in her thatched-roof hut with an LED lamp she got under the Union government’s Saubhagya scheme. “I earn a few thousand rupees. I didn’t get PM Awas (which guarantees a house). But I do get 5kg of rice,” she said.
But the villagers don’t know who to vote for. “Our samaj [community] will decide. Wherever our samaj leaders will tell us, we will vote,” they said.
In a busy junction of Motihari town, Prabhakar Jayaswal, who manages the poll office of the Opposition candidate Rajesh Kushwaha, said, “In our leaflet, we have mentioned that this 5kg free rice is of little help. The government gives a subsidy of ₹1,200 of this free rice in one year. But in the same year, the cost of gas cylinders for the poor people comes at ₹2,000.” Kushwaha is from the Vikassheel Insaan Party.
Suresh Sahu, a daily wager who has returned from Kota for polls and works in a hardware shop in this interim period, disagreed. “It is our compulsion to vote for Modi as he has brought the schemes and gives free foodgrain. We live in perpetual poverty. We have to do anything to earn money.”
A total sum of ₹1,417 crore has been given as bank credit in East Champaran under the livelihood programme, said government figures.
It is the Modi factor and his welfare schemes that will decide the fate of the BJP candidates in this part of India. Sitting BJP MP Radha Mohan Singh, fighting his 10th election, told HT, “There is an election but there is no challenge for me.”
Many of his rivals talk about the voters’ fatigue against him. “Left on his own, he won’t even be able to save his deposit,”Jayaswal said. But from Mohan Prasad to Shiv Kumar, a rickshaw puller, many others argue that they want Modi to win and therefore they have no other choice to vote for the BJP candidate.
