We have seen the Government disband the Amir Das Commission set up to probe the political linkages of the Sena, before it could reveal the Sena links of leaders of BJP-JD(U) and other parties including the present Dy. CM Sushil Modi. This emboldened the feudal forces – as proved by the Chilraon carnage in East Champaran and the massacre of six dalit women and children in the CM’s own home district, Nalanda.
Under the NREGA, around one crore job cards were to have been issued, but the Government has accepted only 50 lakh applications, and its claim of having distributed 23 lakh job cards is a lie. Around 300 crore rupees of the Food for Work scheme for the year 2005-06 should have been transferred to the NREGA fund, but has illegally and hurriedly been ‘spent’ by distributing among contractors, officers and politicians. Shockingly, the Rural Development Minister’s name figures on the BPL list but most poor families fail to find a mention on that list. Starvation deaths continue unabated in Nitish’s Bihar.
The murder of Professor Papiya Ghosh served to underline that women in Nitish Raj are as vulnerable as in Laloo’s. Crime control was the single most important area where the Nitish Government had claimed to demarcate itself from Laloo Raj. The fact of the matter is that all sorts of crime - from murder to kidnapping industry to bank robberies - all continue unabated. And hence the DGP is preaching a new ‘gospel of crime’ that ‘crime was born with the dawn of human civilisation’! Nitish Kumar does not have courage to expel people like Sunil Pandey from his party. And thus Patna remains the ‘capital of crime’, as during Laloo-raj.
Under pressure of mass movements, the Nitish Government was forced to constitute a Land Reform Commission, which was supposed to submit its interim report within 6 months. However, it is nowhere in sight even after one year. Obviously it is destined to meet the same fate as that of earlier land reform commissions, like the Narsingh Narayan Singh commission in 1980 and Ram Jaipal Singh commission in 1986. The urban land ceiling has been lifted to facilitate Malls for the corporate houses. In the name of 20 SEZs, the Government is busy making plans to drive the poor and peasants out of thousands and thousands of acres of land. Perhaps, this is the hidden agenda of land reform!
Nitish had promised – ‘Degree Lao, Naukri Pao’ (Show your degree, Get a Job!). But now the Government says it will recruit merely 1 lakh teachers, while 80 lakh have applied for jobs! Anganwadi and other posts lie empty, and appointments are being made only on a contract basis.
The police brutality (reminiscent of the thrashing of Honda Workers in Gurgaon)
on Siksha Mitras (para teachers) on Patna streets, firing on people protesting against dacoity near a police station in Bhabhua, killing in police firing on guardians accompanying their children for exams, lathicharge on students in Bhagalpur – expose the brutal face of the regime that had promised to ‘wipe every tear from every eye’.
Nitish had boasted that he would ensure reservation for MBCs in the last panchayat elections. However what actually happened was that the powerful sections, in collusion with the administration, looted the certificates themselves, instead of looting booths. Administration declared people victorious according to its choice, thus retaining the hold of feudals and kulaks on the Panchayat. Now, the Government is transferring financial powers of panchayat institutions to the bureaucracy, converting panchayat raj into bureaucratic-raj!