From ‘vote chori’ to liquor mafia, Rahul zeroes in on Bihar’s fault lines

In the battle for Bihar, where Congress leader Rahul Gandhi began the Opposition’s 1,300-km ‘Voter Adhikar Yatra’ a week ago, a grimness born out of poverty, frustration and sheer ennui is apparent on the faces of all you see.

Hoardings from Rahul’s yatra don’t remain hoardings for long — once the rally is over, they are ripped apart and the good quality plastic carted home, to be used as roofing or for partitioning off spaces in their very modest homes.

The Congress leader has been at the forefront of protests against the revision of electoral rolls in Bihar. Calling it ‘vote chori’, he has alleged that the Election Commission’s exercise is aimed at “disenfranchising voters” ahead of the Assembly elections due in November. The poll body has defended the exercise, saying many “non-eligible persons” have been able to procure voter cards and many have multiple voter cards in different constituencies.

As Rahul’s yatra passed through Bihar Chief Minister Nitish Kumar’s home district of Nalanda on August 19, the Congress leader fired a salvo at his government. Further on in Gaya, homes are still mostly made out of mud and the roofs are thatched. Development seems to have bypassed Bihar, despite all promises made by a series of chief ministers.

“Bihar has the highest unemployment rate. We need to eradicate unemployment in Bihar,” Rahul tells the crowd assembled to see him.

Poverty certainly makes people vulnerable. At Mohania on the Bihar-UP border along the historic GT Road, as you enter the poll-bound state from eastern UP side via Varanasi, vehicles — both high-end cars and three-wheelers — with shattered glasses and bumper marks dot the roadside.

These have not been damaged in some highway accidents, but bear the imprint of the Bihar police’s frequent hide and seek with criminals carrying illicit liquor to the dry state — a sprawling mafia network that makes money in every conceivable way, including by having children carry spurious liquor bottles in their school bags in place of books.

The alcohol ban has become something of a campaign issue. Before the ban in 2016, as many as 6,000 shops fronted a liberal liquor policy, with revenue rising from Rs 319 crore in 2014-15 to Rs 3,605 crore in 2015-16. Since the ban, it has been estimated that the government has been losing Rs 4,000 crore annually.

Not only is it denting the state’s tax revenue, it is affecting schoolchildren, particularly in places where poverty is high. A senior police officer, who told this reporter about children carrying liquor bottles inside their bags, conceded that it shook him. “This is the dark underbelly of this state. We let them off after counselling them each time, knowing they will continue to do it,” he said.

While Nitish has stuck to his decision over the last decade since he became CM in 2015, it seems that the benefits from banning liquor are now petering out. Women, who once comprised a significant part of his vote bank — they had appealed to him to punish their drunk, errant husbands — are now complaining that the drinking hasn’t ceased, it has simply become much more expensive.

The OBC core vote constituency, which comprises 63.14 per cent of the population, is also turning away. Extreme Backward Classes (EBCs) like the Pasi caste are affected because their traditional livelihood — extracting liquor from the toddy palm tree — has been seriously affected. EBCs comprise half the OBC population, with 36 per cent of the population.

Moreover, people are now dying from consuming hooch. RJD leader Tejashwi Yadav says his government will review the ban if it comes to power. As many as 190 people have died from drinking hooch, according to official records, but Yadav says the number is much higher. Meanwhile, Rahul’s yatra rolls on.