E-Paper
Caste, Crime and Politics
The links between these three aspects of Bihar's society are much deeper and much more sinister than apparent.
Many quote the Appleby Report - which ranked Bihar as the best-governed state in India in 1949 - to claim that Bihar's politics has "declined" over the years. Bihar politics, they say, has "become" criminalised, and politicians "use" casteist divisions to stay in power.
The truth, however, is the other way round. Caste and crime have been inherent aspects of Bihar's social life for centuries. Today, they have only taken over politics, as well as other institutions of power, as a means of maintaining their hold on Bihar's society.
"Well-governed" for whom?
If Bihar was "well-governed" for some years after Independence, it was largely for the benefit of the landed upper castes - the Brahmins, Rajputs and Bhumihars, says Stuart Corbridge, a London School of Economics professor who has been studying Bihar's rural society for years.
The upper castes controlled, as they still do, endless tracts of land, and the destiny of hundreds of Dalits and tribals who worked as labourers on these tracts. After Independence, when politics became the instrument of power, it was they who formed Bihar's political class.
Their total control on the politics of those days is manifest in the way they derailed Bihar's land reforms movement, not allowing a once-vehement struggle to deliver its promise (a leader of the stature of Rajendra Prasad openly opposed zamindari abolition).
Patrons of poverty
Landlords had a vested interest in Bihar's continued under-development. Decreasing poverty levels, rise in literacy, growth of infrastructure and urbanisation would have terminated their absolute control over land, and over the lives of agricultural labourers whose vote they needed to rule in the new "democratic" set-up.
Development would have also ended some of their "enterprises". A landlord who ran a prolific business ferrying people across the Ganga from Patna prevented the bridging of the river for years. (Eventually, when the bridge did come up, he got the contract for collecting the toll on it - Arvind N Das, The Republic of Bihar).
Crime was only the next step. Absence of investment opportunities and other legal means of enlarging income induced landlords to turn to "illegal accumulation". This was the beginning of the "do numbri" industry - manufacture of spurious products, opening of spurious universities selling spurious degrees and so on.
Caste, politics, under-development and crime thus grew hand in hand in Bihar.
