LALU'S JOURNEY TO NOWHERE

Even after a continuous wilderness of a decade, Lalu Yadav does not seem to have learnt any lesson. When he was convincingly defeated twice by his bête noire, Nitish Kumar, heading the JDS and BJP combine in Bihar, he found the Bihar turf slippery and decided to shift to the national capital. Was it a pragmatic decision? The situation as available today, shows that perhaps he committed harakiri.

Originally he thought that the new coalition being a marriage of highly dissimilar partners would collapse under its inherent contradictions and on his return to Patna, the betrayed people would open-heartedly welcome Lalu as a true saviour. It was a pure and simple miscalculation. In the backdrop of nearly 15 years of Lalu-Rabri misgovernance, the performing alternative of Nitish Govt opened the eyes of the voters. The disturbing law and order situation was brought under control, academic peace and punctuality returned to the educational campus and the whole state was connected with a network of dependable metalled roads. On the other hand Lalu kept on kotowing the UPA head in the hope of diluting the charges against him being enquired into by the CBI. On every decision of the UPA in the Parliament and outside, Lalu continued to extend unconditional support. Finding his minuscule status in the House, the Congress did not give him value to his expectation.

The picture being so, while Nitish was taking the state to the path of progress faster than ever before in the long Lalu dispensation, Lalu was singing the UPA chorus in Delhi. He appeared like a NRI in his home state. The worst effects of this stand was suffered by Lalu when the next assembly election was staged. It further reduced the political stature of both Lalu and his alliance partner Ram Vilas Paswan. Still the RJD supremo, without reading the writing on the wall, stuck to his policy of UPA appeasement. To the utter surprise of gullible Lalu, the politics, known for unexpected  changes, forced him to pause and think afresh because the Congress was seen probing the friendship of the  JDS, the growing force in the state.

Finding himself nowhere, Lalu understood  the ground reality and immediately returned to Bihar to win back his vote bank. He is going to organize a big rally in Patna on May 15. His workers know that being without power will not help them to pull the crowd like in past. Moreover, the time will be of peak heat and humidity and the people will avoid to join the crowd. In the past, in a similar ambitious rally of P.V.Narsimharao at the Red Fort Ground, people preferred to remain in the surrounding lanes and bylanes to avoid the piercing sun. They have seen the Bihar Bachao rally of R.V.Paswan, some months back which betrayed his expectations. Lalu needs more thinking to determine his future line of action.