Keen contest on the cards in Bhojpur

A witness to bloody caste carnages in the past, the Bhojpur region appears to be scripting a keen contest in assembly polls with Narendra Modi- led NDA and Nitish Kumar led alliance fighting a make or mar battle but for people here it is employment and education that matters.
Scores of youths particularly from Dalit hamlets have migrated to cities in search of a livelihood even as identity politics refuses to die.
In Jagdishpur, where Babu Veer Kunwar Singh once raised the banner of revolt against the Britishers and became a hero in folklore, animated debates on elections go on at roadside tea shops.

At the Sikarhata Mushhar toli in Tarari assembly segment in the district, Ramji Manjhi rues that youth have no work there and hence have to leave homes early in search of livelihood. Many Dalit youths leave homes just before their marriage to earn some money to start family life.
Though the land in the region has been fertile, control of resources in few hands has forced the vast majority of have nots to leave their home to eke out two square meals.
The pangs of migration also gave birth to a new genre of literature in Bhojpuri, where terms like bidesia pardesia and bitohia (different categories of migrants ranging from permanent, frequent and temporary) were coined.

Migration was also the recurring theme in the dramas of Bhikari Thakur, who was called the 'Shakespeare of Bhojpur' in which the pain of separation finds expression in a number of folk songs. 'Bidesiya' drama of Thakur, a tale of a housewife whose husband had migrated outside, is a hit in Bihar.

Tarari is witnessing a high profile contest with candidates including a don-turned politician, a former Union Minister and son of a dreaded caste warlord.
Indu Bhushan Singh is a pale shadow of his father Brahmeshwar Singh Mukhia, who headed the dreaded Ranveer Sena, a banned upper caste militia, which allegedly carried out a number of caste carnages in entire Bihar.

Contesting on a Samajwadi Party ticket Singh is trying to make the contest quadrangular in Tarari in Bhojpur, the hot seat of caste politics in the state where bloodbath in the name of land and honour between the upper caste landlords and the land tilling dalits and lower castes led by ultra left forces made international headlines in the nineties. He promises to fight for farmers.
NDA's candidate is Gita Pandey, wife of don-turned politician Sunil Pandey, the Mahagathbandan has fielded former Union Minister Akhilesh Prasad Singh from Congress and CPI-ML is banking on a local Sudama Prasad.
BJP has fielded all its four sitting MLAs in Ara, Shahpur, Sandesh and Agiaon but it remains to be seen whether it repeats its performance after breaking off from JD-U.