Laloo Prasad Yadav is at his devastating best when people expect
him to be demoralised and dead beat.
At the height of a student
agitation against his government some years ago, Yadav's acolytes
had gone running to him to say his effigies were being burnt
all over Bihar. "So what?" he retorted, running his
fingers through his sadhna-cut hair,"So what if they are
burning my effigies? I am the chief minister, who else's effigies
will they burn? Yours?"
For years, Laloo has been the prince of the pulpit, the star of
the stage, the actor who knew just what would turn on the audience.
When he felt nothing but intolerant zeal would work, he was
an intolerant zealot, when he knew a little moderation was
in order he was moderate, when he knew he needed to act the idiot,
the typical country bumpkin from the backwaters of Bihar, he did
just that, when he knew people wanted a messiah, he acted
like a messiah, as 'Krishna reincarnated'!
The real Laloo may actually be none of the above, but he acted
different roles at different times in different places. He knew
the image that would sell. Of all the different roles he
played, the most fetching was that of the anti-hero. He became
such a darling of his constituency so quickly because he was so
much one of them, so much the oppressed and harassed man of the
street, so much the man full of grievances against the system
and the establishment, so much the angry, exploited fellow with
a grudge.
When Laloo first came to power, he made it seem he had become
the chief minister not because he wanted to sit on the gaddi,
but because he hated it so much. He acted as though he hated the
trappings of power, the palatial bungalows, the ring of security
guards, the cavalcade of cars.
He was chief minister only because
he was trying to break the old establishment from within. He opened
his bungalow to the people, he let the cows and buffaloes in,
he broke the security cordon around him, he merged with his people.
He was not there to sit on the gaddi, he was there to tear the
gaddi into bits. He played the anti-establishment trick to perfection.
He went out of his way to live in a dark hovel the first couple
of years as chief minister. And when he moved into that big bungalow
of his which the Britishers had once built, he was forever showing
off how he had elevated colonial elegance to pastoral rusticity;
the cows, the cowsheds, the heaps of antiseptic dung, the fields
lush with paddy, the fish in the pond... Laloo had not arrived
in the bungalow, he made his voters feel they all had.
He would
land his helicopter in the middle of a village field and give
the village folk a free ride, he would order his motorcade to
stop at a street corner and pick up urchins and buy them sweets.
He would walk into a slum, go straight to the darkest hut and
sit down to chat with the women and children. He would sing songs
with them and share chewing tobacco with their men.
Laloo made it seem he did not want power and
glory. If he had power it was only to enable him to do something
for his people. Which is why it is so very strange to see Laloo
behave the way he has been recently. His brazenness, his determination
not to resign even if the Central Bureau of Investigation presses its charges against him
has shown up a man who is now incurably in love with power, a
man who has lost his touch for wearing the right image.
The old Laloo would have quit not only the presidentship of the
Janata Dal but also the chief ministership of Bihar at the first
whiff of scandal. The old Laloo knew the power of the image; he
would have taken to the streets and campaigned as the wronged
do-gooder, the victim of the anti-poor establishment.
He wants
to do it still, but from his gaddi!
Laloo has exposed himself as weak and insecure. He has almost
rendered himself powerless with power. He is no longer the man
ready to give up all. He is suddenly a man who is clinging. He
has lost his political lean.
Somewhere along the line, the folk-hero changed into an ambitious,
arrogant player of the power game. As he spun around Bihar in
his garib chetna rath campaigning for the last Lok Sabha election
he made no secret of his desire to be the country's prime minister.
When told that V P Singh had predicted that no party would get
anywhere near a majority in the Lok Sabha, Laloo said V P Singh
had no idea of the ground reality. The National Front, he declared,
would win 300 seats. Though outwardly he called himself only the
'real king-maker,' nobody doubted he wanted to be the
king himself. To most Janata Dal leaders he was still an object
of fun. Some laughed at his mannerisms, some at his accent, some
at his hair style. But only behind his back. None dared to alienate
the new party boss.
The new 'king-maker' was in high spirits. "Just
as I am clearing up Bihar," he declared with a swagger, "I
will now clean up the whole country."
He proclaimed that
he would turn Bihar into a new haven for the NRIs. Night after
night he had gone around the city of Patna, a sola hat on his
head, a baton in his hand, conducting clean-up operations. Bihar,
said his stooges, was in the throes of change. "Lalooji is
determined to turn the city into another Singapore. He will change
the face of Bihar." There were sniggers all around. Change!
What a word to use for Bihar, they said.
Bihar is supposed to be the "never never" land, the
theatre of the absurd. Laloo himself becomes boring if he becomes
too real; he is good as long as he is a caricature, a man who
does weird things like getting cowdung cakes slapped on the walls
of his official residence, a man who says weird things, like his
theories on the virtues of cow's urine. For years he has been
no more than a "colour story". Laloo Prasad Yadav of
the sadhna cut hair and the Kader Khan tongue.
The media had the
parameters of the parody outlined: Bihar and Laloo Yadav, and
all else that is Bihari must fit into that combination. If Laloo
were to speak sense for an hour on, say, the state's plan outlay
or its industrial projects, he would be lucky to get more than
a few inches in the newspapers. But if said he would make Bihar's
road 'as smooth as Hema Malini's cheeks' he made the
frontpages!
Laloo is now making the frontpages for quite a different reason,
and he remains unfazed by the storm around him. Or is he just
acting? Whichever way one looks at it, there is little doubt that
the Laloo show is going fast forward toward a denouement.
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