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Patna:
At a time when many Indians hold their politicians in contempt,
Nitish Kumar stands out as an object of veneration.
The chief minister of the northern state of Bihar, Kumar is seen
at home and abroad as a miracle worker who has brought the rule of
law and economic development to a place long seen as a pit of
criminality and suffering. The economy of India's poorest state -
where more than half of its 103 million people live in poverty -
grew by about 13 per cent last year.
Even Bill Gates and Robert Zoellick, when he was president of the
World Bank, came to witness the Bihar miracle up close. Kumar, The
Economist effused in January 2010, "has uprooted the Jungle Raj,
restoring law and order".
Despite a reputation of personal probity and an apparently bona
fide zeal for governance and development, Kumar has long kept
silent on one bit of cognitive dissonance. Violent crime may have
declined during his tenure, but as a recent political
assassination reveals, Bihar's "Mr Clean" is himself surrounded by
reputed gangsters.
Like many an Indian state, the power structure in Bihar rests on a
pillar of violence - a nexus of racketeers, landlords, contractors
and ward-heelers that bring out the right voters and suppress the
wrong ones at election time. Kumar governs with a strong hand; no
one gets on the ruling party ticket without his approval.
In 2007, one of the state's leading reputed politician-gangsters,
Anant Singh, was implicated in a grisly rape and murder. This
didn't prevent Kumar from allowing him on the ballot in 2010, or
from campaigning for his re-election. Kumar did allow justice to
take its course in the murder conviction of Munna Shukla, another
criminal partyman, but he also allowed Shukla's wife to replace
him in the assembly.
Kumar's political reliance on accused killers doesn't appear in
the well-polished narrative of rising Bihar. The mask fell last
month after the murder of the popular leader of a militia of
wealthy landlords.
On June 1, Brahmeshwar Singh was gunned down in a dirt alleyway in
Bihar's Bhojpur district. Police officials said the main suspect
is Hulas Pandey, a reputed ganglord and a local political rival
who also happens to be an appointed member of the upper house of
Bihar's legislature. Who appointed him? Kumar's ruling Janata Dal
(United) party. Hulas Pandey has declared his innocence.
The suspect's brother, Sunil Pandey, is an elected member of
Bihar's lower house, also with Kumar's party. Sunil's criminal
record includes pending charges of murder and kidnapping. Both
brothers were members of Brahmeshwar Singh's militia, the Ranvir
Sena, which massacred more than 270 landless peasants during
feudal land wars in the 1990s and early 2000s.
I met Singh a few days before he was killed, and watched as his
supporters rioted in the district seat of Ara and then were
allowed to terrorise the state capital on the day of his funeral.
How could they be stopped? The murder victim, the murder suspects,
and the rioters all represent a key pillar of Kumar's support -
landlords of the Bhumihar and Rajput castes.
Asked to account for the lawlessness, the powerful head of the
state police implied what everyone knew: politics had tied his
hands. "I am a small fry in the system," he said in an interview
with a local television station.
Bihar was deeply, despairingly backward when Kumar took power.
Seven years later, it still is. But with impressive, difficult
initiatives in public health and other sectors, it's clear Nitish
Kumar is governing for the future, even as he tries to ignore his
compromised past.
With the Hindu-nationalist BJP party as his junior partners, Kumar
first took power in 2005 by a narrow electoral margin; he can't
relish that alleged gunmen made the difference. Now, there's no
getting rid of them.
Kumar "rode a tiger" to unseat Bihar's incumbent government in
2005, a ruling party man told the Kolkata Telegraph, and "now he
is afraid to dismount".
Long-time journalist
Dan Morrison is a reporter with National Geographic News, based in
South Asia. The above article appeared on Al Jazeera website on
August 08, 2012.
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