Tarnish needs the Varnish - The Silver Jubilee of ‘Jungle Raj’

Reddish Brown Rustings are visible at the Janta Parivaar Hustings as the same old Iron chain of Secularism have tied them together throughout these 25 years of ‘Jungle Raj’ at which Sir Rudyard Kipling would have written a sequel to his famous Jungle Book had he been alive. This time the characters replaced by members of the species of Homo sapiens belonging to the subspecies specific to the region known as the nucleus of the mighty Magadh Empire of Ancient India. The Flag of Anti-communalism is faded now and the whole plank seems to be jaded. This October the elections in Bihar will be celebrated alongside the main festivals of Dussehra, Diwali and Chhath Puja. The zeal and fervour will touch a new high when cultural and democratic festivals converge in a multiphase election, the result of which is slated to set the tone for upcoming elections in other states in India.

Time now for a new Flag that symbolizes Hope for a glorious Bihar like it was during the utopic days of the mighty Magadh Empire and the prosperity like the famous rivers of Bihar descending from the Himalayas bring with them, deposit the alluvium and irrigate the “Land of milk and honey”. I have no hesitation in nailing my colours to the mast as all of them are nothing but fifty shades of Saffron.

The major spinoff will be a paradigm shift in the way Bihar is perceived as her image has taken a beating in the last two and a half decades. It is now time to shift gears and vroom onto the road of development at full throttle in order to match up to the performance of other states. Bihar lies at an interesting location where it provides a highway for Nepal to the coast, a passage through the Chicken Corridor to Assam, Sikkim and Bhutan and the gateway to North-East for the regions of the west.

It is in the interest of other parts of India that development occupies the cockpit of state government and is stably ensconced in Bihar Politics which has long been mired by caste-based equations in which their members vote en bloc to a particular party which usually panders to that community, as a consequence of which in certain sections of the society vote is a matter of rote learning which doesn’t require any serious contemplation and the association of caste as a stimulus and party as a psychological response to it has given way to a kind of conditioning that is difficult to unlearn.

I just wish development should be a non-discriminatory tide that will even raise the nondescript boats of certain communities hitherto underserved after which it is for them to decide whether to keep sailing or not.

The constituents of the rainbow coalition (read Parivaar) have never lost an opportunity to help each other in times of crisis while jostling for power and elbowing each other out just to keep up with the joneses in achieving new feats of mal-governance. The tug-of-war they were indulging in all these years was phony and was only meant to deceive the voters. Now that all of them have come together under the banner of “Holy alliance of secular political forces” led by the The Pied Piper (of Hamelin) giving a clarion call for wiping out the communal forces who must be fairly paid for getting rid of all the political rats as a result of tying up with his former bete noire which has increased the chances of his defeat. Let us reward him this time by giving a tag of “former” before his name which secures a tax payer funded fortune though in monthly doses before he misleads the naïve and gullible voters through the charm of his “son of the soil” tunes that waxes lyrical about the dreams of special status for Bihar, powerful enough to be a lullaby for the uninitiated.

The winds of change are in the offing as development alone can varnish the tarnished sterling silver image of Bihar, this can happen only if Honourable Voters honour their commitment to build a glorious state and participate in this festival of democracy with great enthusiasm in the coming festive season.