What A Drive In Bihar Tells You About Coming Election

Nowhere are the stories of the coming election better told than on the roads of Bihar.

Photographs: Archana Masih/Rediff

The gleaming new Patna airport is one of the newest emblems of badlav in Bihar.

A shining terminal, resplendent in glass, its bright lights illuminating the night sky.

The rubble of the recently demolished old building lies between the parking bays and the terminal building. In time to come these remains of the old will make way for more parking slots. News is that international flights -- to Kathmandu and the Gulf countries -- will soon arrive in Patna.

As Bihar is poised on the brink of another toughly contested election in the next few weeks, electoral politics is getting noisy and shrill.

A reminder that politics is never far from plain view in Bihar, just beside the airport is the office of the Lok Janshakti Party [Ram Vilas].

Its leader Chirag Paswan, an ally of the National Democratic Alliance, heads the party founded by his late father Ram Vilas Paswan who started out in politics with Bihar Chief Minister Nitish Kumar.

Ram Vilas Paswan once held the record for winning an election with the highest margin in the world (Hajipur in 1977) and was friends with Nitish Babu. Chirag has launched periodic darts at Nitish; his party had contested the 2020 election on its own despite being Nitish's electoral partner and caused maximum damage to the Janata Dal-United -- in at least 25 seats.

It only won one seat. However, it won all 5 seats it contested in last year's Lok Sabha election.

Rediff reported last week that Chirag is threatening to go solo again if he is not given at least 40 seats in the seat-sharing alliance between NDA constituents.

As the battle for seats is fought at party meetings before the real battle begins in a few weeks, the villages, towns and streets of Bihar are already screaming with posters.

On the road, just after crossing the swollen Ganga, a giant poster rises into the blue sky heralding a tenth term for Nitish Kumar as chief minister.

Only seven other chief ministers have served longer tenures than Nitish Babu.

A tilted poster near one of the newer roads put up by the state road construction department boasts of the doubling the road network in 20 years, claiming that people can reach the state capital from any of the Bihar's 38 districts in a maximum of five hours.

The journey to Saran district, around 70 km away, took around one-and-a-half hours.

Enroute lay Sonepur, home to the Sonepur Mela, the largest cattle fair in the world which begins on Kartik Purnima every year.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi -- who made his seventh visit to the state this year on Monday, September 15, to inaugurate a new airport terminal in Purnea and other development projects -- towers in a hoarding outside Sonepur town.

The Opposition INDIA Alliance's recent Voter Adhikar Yatra still had its remnants on the route taken by Rahul Gandhi and likely CM candidate Tejaswi Yadav.

Wooden welcome gates and posters stuck to walls and trees along the route still hang on. Last year, Lalu Yadav's daughter Rohini Acharya lost her debut Lok Sabha contest to pilot-politician Rajiv Pratap Rudy in Saran.

Rohini Acharya appears in several RJD posters in Chhapra, the Saran district HQ.

But the Mahagatbandhan's star is her younger brother Tejaswi. His posters bear punchy messages -- 'Maangey Bihar Tejaswi Sarkar' and 'Badlav Se Hi Badlega Bihar' with pictures of a much younger-and-trimmer Tejaswi Yadav.

The message 'Maangey Bihar Tejaswi Sarkar' are pasted on Chhapra's only flyover, and can be spotted on the walls of houses in the villages by the highway in Saran district.

Candidates hopeful of bagging a nomination have already put up hoardings as 'former candidates' which makes you wonder how quickly they would have to pull those posters down if their candidature does not come through.

The newest entrant in the fray, Prashant Kishor's Jan Suraj party has smartly used the back of the omnipresent e-rickshaws to take its party symbol to the masses.

The school bag is the Jan Suraj party's symbol and a cheerful yellow, the party colour.

A local e-rickshaw owner informs me that he received Rs 500 for putting the big poster and Rs 200 for the smaller one.

The CPI poster in Patna's Phulwari Sharif informs people about the party's Bihar conclave. The hammer and sickle, Marx and Lenin juxtaposed alongside the message of equal education, jobs and healthcare for all.

Among the political posters is one in remembrance of a deceased soldier, Chotu Kumar, who accidentally pressed the trigger of his rifle while disembarking from an army truck in Kashmir. He was married just four months ago.