JDU supremo and Bihar Chief Minister Nitish Kumar’s Samaj Sudhar Abhiyan details the benefits and merits of liquor prohibition in the state. But an attempt is being made to cover up the shortcomings of the legislation that targets the vulnerable, for there are not many benefits around social safety and security schemes to aid their advancement and upliftment.
Shouldn’t Sushasan Babu attend to the contradiction rather than attempting to electorally hide his sins? The State saw his popularity dip with the Bharatiya Janata Party becoming a privileged partner in the NDA alliance, with Nitish Kumar relegating to the bottom of the bargain.
Crafting of a few policy decisions such as girl child education and woman empowerment was notable in his meteoric rise as the State Chief Minister in 2005, ousting his rival Laloo Prasad Yadav, whose rule became notorious and gave a free pass to contractors and criminals. But not anymore, as his son Tejashwi Yadav, leader of the Opposition in Bihar, is actively challenging Nitish’s political capital.
With the State reporting chaos and lawlessness with a sharp rise in the consumption of spurious liquor by claiming many innocent lives in Muzzfarpur, Saharsa etc. to a four-fold rise in crime and dacoity, Bihar has once again drawn flak, depriving itself of special statehood that could have potentially boosted the size of its economy by encouraging industrialisation and investment in innovation.
On the contrary, Nitish babu is building and nurturing his constituency of the most economically backward classes by tiding over the uncertainties of an alliance, whose fate hangs in balance with fence-sitters Kushwaha, Manjhi and Sahani. Politics is about depicting and decorating your desperations for the better of it, with caste being rolled and recast further up.