This session focused on the concept of social justice associated with politics in Bihar in order to gain an understanding of the relationship between political rhetoric, government policies and ground realities. Despite recent governments launching schemes and policies with the supposed aim of empowering women and disadvantaged castes/communities, Bihar’s human development indicators remain low and it is still identified as a ‘backward state’. Did Lalu Prasad Yadav make a radical difference to the condition of OBCs? Has prohibition in Bihar really made women’s lives better? What impact have initiatives such as the bicycle scheme for school-going girls, 50% reservation for women in panchayat raj institutions and 35% reservation in police had on the ground in terms of ensuring gender and social justice? How will the ongoing caste census in the state help promote equality and social justice for all, including those belonging to historically disadvantaged castes? Experts from Bihar gave us insights into the state’s politics and society at the session.
Prof Iftikhar Ahmed, Director, School of Journalism and Mass Communication, Aryabhatta Knowledge University (AKU), moderated the session along with Sonali Singh of Doordarshan, Bihar. Prof Ahmed pointed out that the way people address someone from Bihar: “Ay Bihari!’’ is almost an abuse. However, he had a counter to that: “Ek Bihari Sab pe Bhari’’ (One Bihari can dominate all others)’’.
BBC correspondent Divya Arya began by saying that the ongoing caste-based census in Bihar was of great relevance to ensure that policies were formulated for the marginalised before moving on to the effect of prohibition in the state since 2016. “It started with women in mind to bring down violence within homes. But there has been so much tragedy surrounding hooch.” Lastly, she highlighted the issue of the ‘Migrant Bihari’ looking for livelihood in other states, saying, “Why do they keep leaving?”
D.M. Diwakar, former director of the A.N. Sinha Institute of Social Studies, Patna, said social injustice was structurally rooted in Bihar, which was the first to introduce the Zamindari Abolition Act. However, the Act couldn’t be implemented fully, and till today, land remains concentrated in the hands of a particular group and class. Without land redistribution, the justice question can’t be resolved, he said.
Piecemeal efforts at change only give a temporary sense of relief, but no emancipation. While governments could bring in social change, the Congress which ruled Bihar from 1950-67, then from 72-77, and finally from 85-90, confined itself to welfare programmes. It was the socialist government under Karpoori Thakur, who was chief minister for six months in 1971, and then for two years from 1977 to 1979, which went further and introduced free education till matriculation, set up a primary school in every village, and also increased the representation of OBCs in his cabinet. However, even he didn’t touch the land issue.
The next regime to tackle social justice was that of Lalu Prasad Yadav. Under him, the poor got a voice, which itself weakened the feudal character of Bihar’s society, and the bargaining strength of the OBCs improved, as did their presence in the bureaucracy, but he did not carry out any institutional transformation. His aim was to empower the working classes to have access to the State.
Nitish Kumar’s approach has been different, and he depends on the bureaucracy to implement his programmes unlike Lalu, who counted on political workers. “It’s not surprising that his schemes have fallen short of their targets. Unless you empower people on the ground, you can’t succeed,” he said.
Sudha Varghese, 78, a nun from Kerala who has been working with the Dalit Musahar community in Bihar for 50 years through her organisation Nari Gunjan, said she had approached Nitish Kumar to help work with the government to implement prohibition.
For the Musahars, landlessness and poverty remain the biggest problems. Till those were resolved, they could not be stopped from brewing liquor. That is the only skill they had, apart from rearing pigs, for which there was no meat processing industry to make it commercially viable. However, the CM had not responded, she said.
The ban on alcohol was announced in 2016, but without an alternative source of income, land or assets, the Musahars continued to make alcohol. Raids take place regularly on their homes. Varghese said that the Musahars survived the Covid lockdowns with great difficulty and are still facing hunger, adding that bureaucrats rarely rolled out the schemes meant for the community.
Citing the example of the Indira Awas Yojna, under which each family was to get ₹1.2 lakh to build a house, she said ₹25,000 was taken away by the village mukhiya (leader) and ₹25,000 by the mistri (mason) who builds the house. She said she had seen the houses constructed with the money left: some had no ceilings, others had doors made of straw and bamboo. No bureaucrat bothered to visit the families to check if the schemes had been implemented properly. =
The process of brewing liquor was unequal: the women bought the materials and sat by the fire to brew it; the men sold it to customers and drank with them. So women did occasionally become victims of domestic violence. Returning to the topic of prohibition, she said it had failed to bring about social justice. Musahars continue to brew alcohol and live in the same conditions as before, poor and malnourished. “We cannot imagine the level of their poverty,” she said.
Prof Pushpendra, ex-chairperson, Tata Institute of Social Sciences, Patna, began by quoting Ambedkar: “In politics we will have equality and in social and economic life we will have inequality.’’ Bihar, he said, had contradicted this prediction. Despite social and economic inequality, Bihar had more political equality due to the politics of social justice. “Social justice includes more than caste, I prefer to differentiate between caste as social phenomena and caste as political phenomena,” he said.
‘Caste social’ is ritualized through produced inequalities. ‘Caste political’ is in political participation. This ‘caste political’ has acquired a significance in politics of social justice. What we have achieved in terms of social justice is in terms of caste political while caste social is still lagging behind.
Caste as a social phenomenon was based on scripture and ritualised, but caste also has a political dimension. What Bihar had achieved was social justice in terms of caste as a political phenomenon, but caste as a social phenomenon had not evolved, he said. Pushpendra pointed out that in the society built under the Nehruvian vision, the focus had been more on higher education rather than universal primary education. This benefited the middle-class desire for higher education, but what happened to those deprived of primary education? Today, only the children of the poor went to government primary schools, resulting in poor quality education despite the high enrolment numbers.
He raised the question of what would happen to Bihar given the present focus on the service sector rather than the manufacturing sector, and said, “Current conditions in Bihar were created by economic policies, a part of structural injustice. Bihar is bound to remain the unskilled labour supplier for the informal sector,” he said.
Elaborating on this, he pointed out that social justice had been reduced to political representation. The Bihar Legislature now had more OBCs, but the bureaucracy was still dominated by the so-called upper castes who got promotions because of their educational qualifications. The budget proposals for higher education were also disproportionately high, given which castes had access to it. “So, the inequalities of the caste structure continue. Bihar’s future is linked with what happens to its labour,” he said. “If you want to bring real social justice and economic equality, you must think of those who matter for Bihar’s future: its labour class and those who go to government schools,” he said. “Development can’t be based on government schemes; these play only a supplementary role. The main vehicle for social justice and economic equality is land and education.”
Pushpendra spoke of the importance of the caste census currently ongoing in Bihar. There was a feeling that OBCs had been given less than they deserved, because they were not fully enumerated. The British had done their last caste survey in 1941 but didn’t release it. The caste census holds great potential for OBC mobilisation, including that of EBCs. To create a division in Lalu’s core votes, Nitish Kumar had come up with categories Dalit and Maha Dalit, OBC and EBC, explained Prof Pushpendra. The entire OBC section could be mobilised around the results of the caste survey.
In the 1931 census, OBCs were 52 %. This number was likely to have risen. Already, the Muslim-Yadav factor was a formidable winning formula, and this combined with OBCs, could influence electoral outcomes. However, this focus exclusively on political representation revealed a reductionist understanding of society. civil society was complicit in this interpretation because it benefited from it. Political representation helped civil society members get influential contacts in the government and its agencies. This was seen as part of Bihar’s “welfare politics’’.
Prof Pushpendra saw the prohibition policy as a way of using illegality as a strategy against the poor, the very people to whom political representation was given.
Usha Kiran Khan, 77, a historian, award-winning author and Padma Shri, opened a window into the lives of rural Bihar’s women. As an observer of rural life, she had found primary schools had been set up in most villages, at a distance of 3 or 4 kos (1 kos = 3.1 km). Parents, including those belonging to Dalit and Maha Dalit castes such as Paswans and Musahars, sent their children to school by boat or bullock cart but after sending their daughters to primary school, they hesitated to send them far away to secondary schools. Primary school students study while working in the fields and herding and grazing cattle. The boys tended to run away after the mid-day meal, but girls stayed on in class, and women may soon outdo men in Bihar, she observed. Despite girls showing a greater interest in education, the attitude was that boys must be sent for higher education because they can go out and earn. Girls get tied down because of the distance and household chores. Secondary schools are few and far between. “So, girls become literate, but not educated. They are bright and sensible, but unable to get the opportunities they deserve,” she said.
She made the point that inflexible rules of patriarchy and caste often left upper caste women unhappier and more backward “because they cannot move out of the house without the permission of their men. There is more violence there.”
Usha Kiran Khan’s book on Asha workers was released by Prof Shiv Narayan Singh.
Ravi Shankar Upadhyay, a journalist, wound up the session on a lighter note, speaking about the cuisine of Bihar and its written history that dated back 5,000 years, and provided a glimpse into the cultural mores that underpinned the social and political dynamics of the state.
He said ancient Bihar had observed prohibition too, citing the Jataka tales which spoke of sharab bandi (ban on alcohol) in Rajgir/Rajgriha, the ancient capital of Magadh.
British traveller Peter Mundi wrote in 1632 that during his journey from Agra to Patna, he looked for alcohol in Sasaram, Sher Shah Suri’s capital, and was told it was illegal, and if he was caught consuming it, his home would be demolished and he would be jailed.
Turning to the food of the region, he said litti chokha, a wheat ball stuffed with spiced Bengal gram flour and served with a vegetable dish of roasted tomato, onion, garlic and potato or brinjal, is Bihar’s most famous dish, followed by thekua, a crisp sweet offered as prasad during the chhat puja; and the sweet khaja, which now has a GI tag. Some of these were mentioned in Panini’s Ashtadhyayi, the 6th century BCE grammar treatise.
Bihar has a long tradition of using different varieties of rice, he said, explaining that when Xuanzang (Hiuen Tsang) came to Nalanda in the 7th century, he was welcomed with Maha Shali Rice. Biharis do not eat new rice but instead use it to make dishes such as malpua and pitha.
Bihar was also known for sweets made from sesame seeds: Gaya’s tilgut was famous, as were tilwas (sesame laddoos) and anarsa (sweet made of rice flour, mawa and sesame).
Due to time constraints, he could not give a fuller picture of Bihar’s cuisine, especially its fish and mutton dishes, but he gave the group a taste of it all during lunch on the sunny lawn.