There’s something special about Bihar

PRIME Minister Narendra Modi’s transfer of Rs 10,000 each to 75 lakh women in Bihar comes on the day a special session of the Punjab Assembly demanded a special package of Rs 20,000 crore from the BJP-ruled Centre, to alleviate the costs that will be needed to help the flood-affected people in the state.

The PM’s one-time generous transfer to Bihar’s women amounts to Rs 7,500 crore. Contrast this with the Rs 1,600 crore relief package the PM promised Punjab when he came here about three weeks ago. BJP sources say this is just the first tranche and that Punjab needs to do its homework before more can be sent, but no such questions are being asked for the Bihar package.

In fact, no questions are being asked why the PM is sending such a generous sum to Bihar’s extraordinary women in the first place. So here are some :

Has there been a flood in Bihar that has damaged a standing paddy crop on around four lakh acres? Have a few hundred animals, both cows and buffaloes, the backbone of the state dairy cooperative as well as of families in the predominantly agrarian state, gone missing? Have homes been washed away, schools damaged beyond recognition, fields silted over with mud and clay which are now being cleared by tractors and JCBs? Has the fencing on the international border – Bihar has one with Nepal, but it’s an open one, which means there’s no fence — that divides India from Pakistan been swept away?

The reason for the PM’s generosity for Bihar, of course, is clear — Bihar is going to the polls in November.

The reason for his focus on Bihar’s 6.3 crore women — one eligible woman from every family may apply to start an employment of her choice, and if her application is approved, then the amount may go up to Rs 2 lakh — is also clear. The PM is hoping that Bihar’s mahilas, its ‘M’ constituency, will vote for the BJP with both their hands, cutting across caste and creed, just as the rest of the country has started doing.

Clearly, there’s something special about Bihar. Moreover, samajhne vaalon ko ishaara kaafi hai, they say, that smart people only need a signal to understand. Although the BJP is trying really hard to help the flood-affected in Punjab — and is working on new initiatives to help with loans for missing milch animals, especially in the six districts that border Pakistan, as well as in the dairy cooperative sector across the state — the party also knows it will take much more to overcome the Punjabi’s accumulating resentments against the Centre.

In many ways, this is a make-or-break moment for Punjab. If you are helping out in small or big ways, then you will be counted. If you aren’t, you won’t. That’s why the Congress better watch out. Before the floods, the aam aadmi on the streets would tell you that they were fed up with the ruling AAP and would teach it a lesson in the 2027 elections, just as they taught the Congress a lesson in 2022 and swept in 92 AAP MLAs.

In fact, people used to say that if elections were held today in Punjab, the odds would be on the warring Congress — there are at least five chief ministerial candidates in the state party.

After the floods is a whole different story. Some AAP MLAs, like Kuldeep Dhaliwal from Ajnala, have been astonishing in the manner in which they have helped their fellow Punjabis. Some other AAP MLAs have barely stirred a leaf. The Congress has been staggeringly lax, even though Rahul Gandhi came across for a few hours, rode a tractor over silt-soaked fields and cuddled a little boy who had lost his cycle in the floods. (The party bought the boy a bike.)

It is in this light that PM Modi’s parsimonious Punjab flood relief announcement and the clear lack of trust between the state and the Centre should be seen. Compare this with the manna for Bihar.

The unkind would say the PM’s Bihar blessing is coming just ahead of the announcement of the state poll, and therefore, before the model code of conduct kicks in. Some others would add that he and the BJP are leaving no stone unturned — Chief Minister and BJP ally Nitish Kumar is unwell, won’t be CM again and so the BJP magic has to work. That Prashant Kishor of Jan Suraaj may be the joker in Bihar’s political pack, but his attack on BJP Deputy CM Samrat Choudhary is nothing short of lethal.

Be that as it may. The fact is that Modi has succeeded in transforming the traditional poll dynamic that has these past many decades rested on caste — he has literally forged a “women constituency” by shaping schemes like Ujjwala Yojana and Lakhpati Didi Yojana. The BJP has unabashedly tempted women voters with sops in states going to the polls — Lado Lakshmi in Haryana, Ladki Bahin in Maharashtra, Ladli Behna in Madhya Pradesh, Mahila Samriddhi Yojana in Delhi and Mahtari Vandana in Chhattisgarh.

In the 2019 General Election, for the first time ever, women edged out men in voter turnout, 67.18% vs 67.02% — in the first poll in 1952, 63% men and 47% women had voted — and an AxisMyIndia poll survey showed that 46% women compared to 44% men voted for Modi.

For tradition-bound politicians, the news has only become worse. First, AxisMyIndia found in Uttar Pradesh (2022) and Madhya Pradesh (2023) polls that more women voted for the BJP than for other political parties. Second, while 73% women said they voted in favour in BJP-aligned homes, astonishingly, even in Congress-aligned homes, 25% women reported aligning themselves in favour.

PM Modi was the first to see this hurricane coming, although it is a moot question what he’s doing with the wealth of data coming in — there are only seven women out of 72 in his Council of Ministers, and only two in the Cabinet, Nirmala Sitharaman and Annpurna Devi. (The current Lok Sabha only has 74 women MPs, four short of the previous one.) It is now said that the 2023 law giving 33% quota for women in Parliament will be implemented in the 2029 election, but after a full delimitation exercise which is likely to expand the number of constituencies in the country.

Back to Bihar. The state is astir with the Special Intensive Revision (SIR) poll exercise. Political parties are putting their best foot forward. And PM Modi has launched his Brahmastra. Suffice to say that as the rest of the nation watches, Punjab will be watching even more closely.