Lalu Prasad to pen book on Mandal movement

A raconteur with an inimitable style, RJD chief Lalu Prasad will now put pen to paper and write on the Mandal politics that took the country by storm in 1990, changing forever the Indian political scene.

A former chief minister of Bihar, Lalu Prasad said he plans to write a book on the 'Mandal movement' of 1990 that aimed at ensuring social justice in the country.

"I have decided to write a book on the movement to ensure social justice in the country," Lalu said at a function here at the Rashtriya Janata Dal office here while pointing out that 'Mandal politics' had a long history.

Parliamentarian B.P. Mandal headed the eponymous Mandal Commission set up in India in 1979 by the then Janata Party government, led by prime minister Morarji Desai, with a mandate to identify socially- or educationally-backward classes in the country.

It was also mandated to consider seat reservations and quotas for people to redress caste discrimination. It used 11 social, economic and educational indicators to determine backwardness and later recommended changes to caste-based quotas to 50 percent.

"The coming generations must know the movement for social justice after the Mandal Commission recommendation were announced by the then prime minister V.P. Singh," said Lalu Prasad, who claimed to be one of the first to implement the recomendations in Bihar as the then chief minister in 1990.

"My book will also reveal a few interesting aspects of Indian politics, including the BJP's decision to withdraw from the V.P. Singh's government to infamous Ram Janambhoomi movement launched by L.K. Advani and how I got him arrested in Bihar," the former chief minister said.

Lalu Prasad said he will also expose those who conspired to frame him in the infamous fodder scam and sent him to jail.

"I was made a victim of political propaganda by powerful people, who were threatened by my commitment to social justice in line with the Mandal Commission movement," he said.

He said his book will be full of real stories and different political ups and downs of over four decades in Bihar and the country. It will also expose big names in politics as to how they rose to the peak of power politics.

Lalu Prasad was forced to resign as chief minister in 1997 after he was framed in a fodder scam and his wife Rabri Devi succeeded him as the Bihar chief minister.

Later, he became railway minister in the cabinet of prime minister Manmohan Singh in 2004.