Dear Editor,
In the yesteryears of Bihar’s political scenario, Lalu Prasad Yadav was the ultimate boss. Lalu played a vital role in the central politics and at times he emerged as the kingmaker and even dictated terms to his political rivals.
Lalu attracted attention of millions of people in and around India, by his unique style of talking and reacting to questions put to him by the fellow politicians and even media. Lalu Prasad Yadav was once considered to be the chanakya of management ethos. As Railway Minister of the country Lalu was able to bring the otherwise shattered and most miserably hit Indian Railways on the tracks of progress, reform and profitability.
And this was no less than a miracle. How he did it, is still a million dollar question. But anyway this surprised many and also put him ahead of all other management Gurus of the country and abroad.
He once addressed the management students of universities like Wharton and Harvard Business School in the US and apprised them as to how he scripted his success story of Indian loss making railways. During his tenure as Railway Minister of the country in UPA regime, Lalu became very popular and was respected even by his political rivals. But, who could have thought that Lalu is yet to script a story, but this time not a success story but a story of disaster, debacle and decimation of his political career. And, ironically he can blame none but himself for that. Nitish’s parting ways in the Coalition Government was the final nail in the coffin. Lalu’s reverse counting in Bihar politics started with the ‘fodder scam’. The fodder scam was a corruption scandal that involved embezzlement of about Rs 9.4 billion from the government treasury of Bihar. Among those implicated in the theft and arrested were then Chief Minister of Bihar, Lalu Prasad yadav as well as former Chief Minister, Jagannath Mishra. The scandal led to the end of Lalu’s reign as Chief Minister.
Lalu’s reputation in Bihar received a big jolt on account of his involvement in corruption and misappropriation of state exchequer.
In a state of insecurity and fear that he may lose Bihar in the 2015 elections, Lalu played a big political game when he joined hands with Nitish Kumar. The bluff worked with the Bihar voter and Lalu somehow was able to do some face saving and the coalition came into being. Though Nitish and Lalu are poles apart, in so far as the Bihar politics is concerned, but it was Nitish’s political compulsion that made him to join hands with Lalu, simply because he didn’t want BJP to come in power in Bihar.
And now the biggest and the ugliest family corruption tangle which involves almost every family member of Lalu’s family, has undoubtedly put Lalu in a soup. It has hit him very bad politically as well as socially.His younger son, Deputy Chief Minister,Tejashwi Yadav, not only lost the chair but Lalu’s RJD also got thrown out of power by Nitish Kumar, joining hands with BJP to form a new government,Tejashwi is named in an alleged case of land-for-hotels scandal. The CBI raided the residence of Lalu, also named in the case, and other properties in five cities, including Ranchi and Delhi. So all is not well in Lalu’s camp. In fact the Bihar voter made Lalu politically arrogant. And this arrogance and over confidence led to Lallu’s political decimation. And, perhaps in the years to come Lalu may have to pay a much bigger price for the political sins committed by him under the patronage of some of his very close aides, who had a very bad reputation in the political circles of Bihar. Lalu’s ties with criminals, his psedosecular image, his corruption and political high-handedness are some of the very strong reasons for his debacle.Lalu’ s political career, I am afraid, has perhaps finally, been put to rest.
Manmohan Dhar
Via-e-mail
