Gupta, Yadav Differ On Solution To Bihar Violence
Their diagnosis is the same, but Union home minister Indrajit Gupta and Bihar Chief Minister Laloo Prasad Yadav differ sharply on how to remedy the endemic violence in central Bihar. The problem is urgent, as the frequency of violent incidents has increased. The latest involved the death of ten Dalits on Sunday, allegedly by the outlawed Ranvir Sena attacked CPI(ML) supporters.
Home secretary Padmanabhiah said yesterday that the Bihar government had failed to seize the local mafia armies arms, which the Union home ministry had recommended.
Both Gupta and Yadav agree that the violence stems from the confrontation between the haves and have-nots of rural Bihar. Gupta, seeing it through the prism of Marxism, identifies the failure to implement land reforms as the cause. But Yadav, steeped in caste-based politics, holds that things will only settle down when the backward castes get their due share of the socio-economic pie.
Of course, to the extent that it is the scheduled and other backward castes that have been deprived of land over the centuries in this predominantly agrarian and very fertile area south of the Ganga, both are essentially on the same track. But Yadav doesnt seem to think that just handing out `pattas to the dispossessed will suffice.
The different approaches have come to a head recently over disarming the local mafia armies. Most of these armies, including the Ranvir Sena, comprise upper caste men banding together to violently keep the resurgent backward castes in check. The backward castes in turn have formed a couple of similar armies.
A recent home ministry report indentified Yadav as the erstwhile political patron of some of these. The report, prepared by three senior police officers, was submitted to the home ministry in January. It also mentions Union railway minister Ram Vilas Paswan and former Union minister Ram Lakhan Singh Yadav as the political patrons other groups. While Paswan runs the non-militant Dalit Sena, Ram Lakhans name is associated with the (upper caste) Bhumihar-dominated Ranvir Sena.
Gupta, who has visited the sites of violence twice, wants these senas banned. The Left blames these armies for the violence in rural Bihar. Even the CPI(ML), which has turned from the bullet to the ballot in recent years, backs this. It has a strong base among the scheduled castes of the area.
Reacting in a chat with reporters recently, Yadav said the solution did not lay in seizing the guns of militants in central Bihar. There are haves and have-nots. Unless something is done to fill the gap, nothing is going to change, certainly not by police action, Yadav observed. The seven districts just south of the Ganga, including and west of Patna, have a long tradition of peasant movements dating to before Independence. These became more and more violent after the Naxalite movements of the 1960s.
Even several central operations in the 1980s to check this violence failed to make any dent. A CPI(ML) publication claims that the Ranvir Sena alone was responsible for killing as many as 113 people in 1996. Some social scientists believe that neither of Yadavs nor Guptas analysis is adequate. Veena Das, who teaches sociology at the Delhi School of Economics, holds that the withdrawal of the state, not only in the form of the police but most importantly in schooling and other social services, has spurred violence. She points out that the dispossessed have far more aspirations than before and are conscious of their rights.
Both the caste and class arguments are flawed, she adds: Lower caste criminals as opposed to upper caste criminals is no solution. Similarly, the various Naxalite movements have shown that the problem is not one of class conflict alone, she argues.