The breeze, Bihar and hot air: Sowing the wind & reaping the whirl wind

As promises poured in Bihar during the election campaign, Biharis were reminded of a couplet written by Ghalib over 200 years ago.

‘Tere Waade pe jiye hum to ye jaanjhoothjana, Kekhushi se mar najaate agar etabarhota’. (I lived on your promise, but knew all along it was false; Wouldn’t I have died in sheer joy if I had believed in it)

As polling on November 3 for the second phase drew to a close, BJP IT Cell chief Amit Malviya tweeted, “An MLA’s basic salary is approx 40,000 rupees. Even if full salary is cut, total amount would come to some Rs 97 lakh (40,000 x 243). Assuming people are given Rs 5,000 Rupee jobs, it means only 1,940 jobs not 10 lakh! Tejashwi has no idea of what he is talking.

He was of course responding to RJD leader Tejashwi Yadav’s promise of giving a million government jobs if he is voted to power. The young challenger has repeatedly been asked during the campaign how he would manage to create so many government jobs. His stock reply has been that there are huge vacancies in already sanctioned posts, that the state government has not been able to spend even the budgeted amount and that where there was a will, there was a way.

Asked the question again, the chief ministerial contender quipped that if it became necessary, salary of ministers and MLAs would be reduced. This was the part that Malviya was reacting to. He is not alone. There are many who are asking the same question and most people seem to believe, like Malviya, that the promise is all hot air.

But the problem with Malviya’s tweet was that his own party and Prime Minister Narendra Modi have rarely shied away from ‘hot air’. The PM himself has never been averse to making ‘airy fairy’ promises. Worse, his Government has not been averse to spend an obscene amount of money on vanity projects.

One just had to remind Malviya of the Rs 3000 Crore spent on the Statue of Unity, Rs 20,000 Crore being spent on reconstructing the central vista in a four-kilometre radius in New Delhi, Rs 8,500 Crore on buying TWO VIP planes for the President, Vice President and the Prime Minister and Rs 7,000 Crore allegedly spent by the Union Government on advertisements to call his bluff.

Railway Minister Piyush Goel had declared in January that the statue of unity was expected to create an economic ecosystem worth Rs one lakh Crore. Extending the Goyal arithmetic to Bihar, the Rs 125 lakh Crore promised by Modi in 2015 would have by now created an economic ecosystem worth Rs 3750 lakh Crores!

Even Nitish Kumar has not been discreet in spending money on vanity projects. Rs 400 Crore on a new museum, Rs 300 Crore on a park in Patna, an equivalent amount to construct an International Convention Centre at Rajgir and Rs 500 Crore on advertising himself reflected poorly on his priorities and the needs of the people. Extending Malviya’s logic, if less than a Crore of Rupees can create around 2,000 low paying jobs in Bihar, then the money spent on the Statue of Unity could have paid for TWO million jobs for a month.

The tweet showed some desperation and did not explain how the BJP hoped to fulfil its promise of giving 1.9 million jobs to Biharis. Again, hot air, Mr. Malviya? BJP’s promise of jobs came after Nitish Kumar mocked RJD’s promise of jobs and was intended to overshadow Tejashwi Yadav’s promise that his government would address urgently the issue of exodus for employment from the state.

Voters in Bihar have also been quick to remind the Prime Minister of his generous promise of Rs 1.25 lakh Crore by way of central grant when he was campaigning in the state five years ago. Addressing an election rally at Buxur, Narendra Modi had dramatically asked the crowd how much he should allot to Bihar for its development. Rs 50,000 Crore, he asked the crowd, asking them to shout their approval. He went up to Rs 1.25 lakh Crore and triumphantly declared that the crowd’s wish had been granted.

The promised amount would be more than enough of course to fulfil Tejashwi Yadav’s promise of a million government jobs. Who can blame him then for gently reminding the PM of the promise?

In 2020, the contrast between the Prime Minister’s election speeches and Tejashwi Yadav’s response has been stark. The young man has been respectful, welcomed the Prime Minister ‘on behalf of the people of Bihar’ to the state for addressing election rallies before reminding the PM of his promises and seeking his help.

In sharp contrast, the Prime Minister harped back on the ‘Jungle Raj’, the ‘family’ and made snide comments on the ‘Yuvaraj’ (Prince) while attacking the opposition for aligning with Naxalites, terrorists and Maoists. He would not refer to his past promises though.

Yadav on the other hand reminded the Prime Minister that sugar mills in the state were yet to be re-opened in the state. At an election rally in Motihari in 2015, Narendra Modi had promised that on his next visit he would be having a cup of tea with sugar produced by mills in Motihari. The PM visited Motihari again this year but conveniently ignored his earlier promise.

In a polite open letter to the Prime Minister, Tejashwi Yadav wondered why the unemployment rate in Bihar was the highest. Surely, he wrote, the Prime Minister as head of NITI Ayog would be aware that the state lagged behind in most indices. Why are Biharis with MBA degrees condemned to work as Chaprasis ? What happened to his much vaunted Gareeb Kalyan Yojana? Why were a million job cards distributed to people during the lockdown in the state but barely a few thousand given work under MGNREGA? Why have payments not been made to people for the past four months even after they put in the work?

Couldn’t the Prime Minister have changed the rules to grant special status to Bihar? When the Constitution is being amended all the time, Tejashwiwondered in the letter, why couldn’t the popular and all-powerful Prime Minister change the rules for the sake of the state? Why couldn’t the Prime Minister turn Patna University into a central university, he wondered, despite the chief minister requesting the PM publicly with folded hands?

A parody of the lyrics of a song in the film ‘Three Idiots’ had been a campaign tool against Modi in 2015. The parody promoted then by the JD(U) and the RJD went on these lines:

“BahtiHawasathawoh,
Gujarat se ayathawoh,
Kala Dhan lane walatha who,
Kahan Gaya, use dhoondho”

(He was like a breeze from Gujarat; he was to bring in black money but where has he gone? Do look for him)

Nitish Kumar had then ridiculed the PM by saying that even a victory in a Panchayat election in Ladakh made him (Modi) see a wave in his favour. Price rise was an election issue then and in Bihar, inflation is an issue in 2020 as well.

But Narendra Modi has been as blasé as ever. In a speech on November 1 in the state, he invoked Chhath, the most important festival in Bihar when people worship the Sun.

But the manner in which the PM invoked the festival prompted some observers to say that it seemed that the festival and the feasting are all due to the PM. “The common man pays Rs 88 for one litre of petrol but it is Modi Ji who keeps feeding the hungry,”

Hot air, anyone?