Both the books have very interesting names. The story goes, there was a place in Patna, which was impossible for trains to pass through some 20 years ago, without halting. People invariably pulled the chain here, just a few minutes out of Patna junction, and referred to it as Ruk(h)ta-pur. Finally, the railways, by then in Bihar’s pocket, decided to make it a halting station and called it Muktapur, as it was shy of an official name that included the vernacular word rukhta. But Bihar’s people continued to call it Ruktapur, a name that Pushyamitra has adopted for his book. The chapters are beautifully headlined and telling commentaries on the state of affairs in 21st century Bihar, after 15 years of Nitish rule. Dho-dho Rani, Kitna Paani, describes the floods and water crisis in the State while other chapters talk of landlessness, the fate of women and the girl child, and in Covid times, about the lack of adequate healthcare.

Neither land reforms, nor water, nor the Muzaffarpur shelter rapes, nor Covid management were election issues in Bihar assembly polls. Then Chief Minister Nitish Kumar told Hindustan Times’ Vinod Sharma on 28 April that ‘asper real time information, more than 2.5 million migrants have applied for immediate relief of’ Rs 1,000, every month ‘which is being provided from the Chief Minister’s Relief Fund’. The estimate of migrant labour returning to Bihar today stand at 4 million plus. Pushyamitra begins his book with unemployment and ends with the state of education. In an online discussion, he recently pointed out that a majority of migrants from Bihar who worked outside the State, earned less than Rs 3,000 a month. Which means, the State has been unable to provide even this little wage to a Bihari man and woman so that she migrates to earn even this meagre amount.

The BJP, beginning its confident campaign with Sushant Singh Rajput, missed the plot totally. It had no social issues on agenda when it began, and the Janata Dal (United) demoted to junior partner in the coalition, too, lost sight of what Bihar needs or wants. Both, the JD(U) and BJP, forgot that Bihar’s median age is 20 going to be 29 in 2026. They let a 30-year-old political rookie scream out job promises to almost 72 million voters.

Santosh Singh’s book, JP to BJP, interestingly tracks ideology in Bihar since before independence. Ten years before the ‘JP Movement’, Bihar had turned Socialist. Bihar’s leaders were greatly influenced by the Anusheelan Samity, by Bhagat Singh, by the two Kosambis, especially DD who was Patna-born and Jayaprakash Narayan, the US-trained Marxist, and of course Lohia.The Socialist Party was set up in Patna on 17 May 1934, with Acharya Narendra Dev as its president. The then influencers in caste-conscious Bihar were people like Ramnandan Mishra, Rahul Sankrityayan (the Indologist writer), Swami Sahajanand (Vivekanada’s disciple) who controlled the Bhumihars. It is more than 50 years ago that the Congress lost power in Bihar... in 1967 assembly elections. Socialists won and Samyukta Vidhayak Dal under Mahamaya Prasad Sinha formed the first non-Congress government in Bihar. The backward MLAs tally went up to 82, never has there been so many in the State assembly after that.

While the Socialists allied with JP in 1977, the Communists stayed with the Congress and opposed JP’s hotchpotch anti-Congress coalition.JP to BJP quotes Sharad Yadav to say, ‘JP’s acceptance of Bharatiya Jan Sangh ended its untouchability and the long-lasting stigma of the RSS being the killer of Mahatma Gandhi’. From Champaran to Bhagalpur riots to Belchchi and more, the book tells the stories of Jagdeo Prasad, Karpoori Thakur (who Singh calls a subaltern hero), Kapildeo Singh, Ramanand Tiwary, the JP Movement’s spawns: Lalu Prasad, Nitish Kumar, Sushil Modi, Ramvilas Paswan, Raghuvansh Prasad Singh who piloted the MNREGA, and follows the rise and fall of Socialism in India, through Bihar.

It quotes litterateur Prem Kumar Mani, former Bihar DGP DN Gautam, senior bureaucrat Pratyaya Amrit and many others to record the politicians’ broken promises and Bihar’s social needs – a Common Education System, electrification, bridges over rivers etc etc to paint a picture of all that Bihar needs. The two books talk of what Bihar wants but Aspiration was a word missing in the NDA rhetoric in Bihar. (IPA Service)