When every hope burns to stinking inconsequence - JOHN WIENERSParts of Bihar are so depressing it can give nightmares for years. The roads suddenly disappear into dust; the half-constructed flyovers look like forgotten ruins of modernity; car skeletons on the badly damaged roads seem like gargantuan Halloween monsters in the night, their accidental misery a shocking reminder of some dark past that Bihar doesn’t even want as a footnote in the history of its highways; villages sunk in absolute darkness look like ancient restrooms for maddened ghouls roaming freely and menacingly in the night; thick swirls of dust that, in some places, have permanently settled on the vegetation, making a home whose permanence can’t be disturbed; in some wretched patches only a passing, hooting train is a hulking reminder that Bihar is living in the 21st century, the swift motion of its cars symbolising hope and offering mobility to everyone stuck in ragged jams on both sides of a level crossing. Bihar wastes a lot of time at its many level crossings, stuck horribly in a thick traffic emitting fumes that can seem like quickly assembled and blisteringly disassembled gas chambers, a crushing, momentary hell that some unfortunate Biharis have to haltingly pass through in search of their daily havens.Even a portion of the immensely long Gandhi Bridge, which connects the capital Patna with a huge swathe of Bihar, has caved in, its detritus fallen into Ganga that flows quietly underneath. The holy river, hectically busy with the yearly immersion of the goddess, would not have been happy accepting the mangled offerings of Bihar’s newness. But still it is serene.Serenity doesn’t come easily to Bihar; it’s a busy, dramatically chaotic place. Now, for anyone sitting in Delhi trying to be globally vigorous, Bihar’s bedlam can seem like an all-hell-breaks-loose jungle raj, a definition pauperised of meaning by media mavens and garrulous glitterati of politics. For some, what Bihar witnessed for 15 years on Lalu’s watch was plain raj minus the jungle, which anyway connotes, in the imagination of the Indian affluent, an area where everything, including law, peace and order, has broken down. But that jungle raj still exists in certain pockets of Bihar, a decade after Lalu ceased to exercise his pernicious hold over the Bihari middle-class. Jungle raj is a cocky middle-class concept that completely ignores and deliberately bypasses the sordid reality of Bihari underclass, whose members are legion. Many low-caste Biharis, who were dirt-poor and pitilessly suppressed by the upper castes, found voice and freedom under Lalu’s rule. And it is these Biharis who find the meaningless stupidity of jungle raj, repeated ad nauseam by gloating, TV habitues of Delhi, revolting.If there is any raj in Bihar, it is caste raj. And it is this alphabet soup of castes that every politician is trying to stir and garnish and then serve hot to people of Bihar, many of whom still pass their scarred days starving. Forget Lalu, forget Mandal, forget Karpoori Thakur. Even Nitish, the man who has ruled Bihar for a decade and champions development , swiftly extracted from the caste cauldron a new mahadalit potion and forced it down the throat of Bihar. That, in sum, was his attempt at stirring the always churning pot of caste. All Bihari politicians have done it. In the last decade, Nitish, say Biharis, has developed some parts of the hapless state, but Bihar, after years of apathy and inertia, is so deep into darkness that it becomes an almost impossible task to pull up the entire state by bootstraps into light.It’s a thrilling sight to see young girls, on their way to school, in Bihar cycling away gaily on lonely roads in the morning. But in parts of the state the infrastructure has crumbled so badly that Bihar hardly seems Bimaru; it seems it is suffering excruciatingly on death bed. And the lower castes, though their lot has improved and they have found their voice, still go through the wringer of upper-caste exploitation. Dalit girls are rampantly raped and farm hands are deliberately paid a pittance. In some villages that still look the boondocks of civilisation and where the M-L communists are very active, horror stories just keep tumbling out of everyone. Some say they aren’t paid for the work they do; some say they are threatened all the time; some say the state just doesn’t care a whit about them; some say their women are always stalked by goons who are placed up in the caste hierarchy. Amid all these countless stories of immense distress, caste and its baleful grip on the state never gets loosened.The saffron party, whose posters are screaming its resurgence from the dilapidated rooftops of capital Patna, is offering quick convalescence by coaxing Bihar to accept it by using a rather stupid pitch to solicit the votes of the Biharis. Parivar ki dawai ke liye sarkar badliye (change government for family’s medicine), an asinine line that presupposes that every Bihari is ill with some mysterious ailment. But, on the streets, gullies, dirt tracks and collapsing roads of Bihar, people show their resilience by daily battling systemic inequalities, grim and hurtful feudal exploitation and dawdling infrastructure.From Dumra Road in Sitamarhi to Bhojpur’s Bathani Tola, everyone wants work, but obviously can’t scream and put up imposing posters in Patna, explaining their helplessness and announcing to the world at large their disintegrating future. Like migratory birds, the politicians will come and go when it suits them, but many Biharis have permanently flown the coop in search of hope, work and a decent future. The politicians continue to weave fantastic dreams of development and talk ceaselessly about jungle raj, knowing full well that these tropes will at least get them their brownie points on television and improve their careers. In some places in Bihar, even the mention of the word development seems like a grievous insult. Its nauseating repetition clashes with the enormous nothingness of daily reality, turning it into a meaningless cliche that offers no future for a Bihar that still seems far away from entering the modern civilisation.And many, who still have to face the sordid reality daily, want to go, to join their coevals who have made a better life for themselves out of the state. Bihar, 88% rural, can improve its abysmal agricultural produce and introduce land reforms to shore up the lives of many Biharis who toil hopelessly on the farms, most owned by rapacious landlords who don’t want to share the spoils with their workers, leaving them to lead utterly despondent lives. The canals are going kaput, the rice paddies are going bad for lack of water, the small farmers are suffering, the farm subsidies never reach them, making people either leave the state altogether or lead an agonising life that starts in the morning with desperation and ends in the night with total dejection. As much of India rapturously seeks a strobelighted future, much of Bihar seems to be crawling in appalling darkness.On the road to Motihari from Patna, just after Muzaffarpur, two young girls are gyrating madly on a jerry-rigged stage to loud, double-meaning Bhojpuri numbers in the afternoon a day after Dussehra. A huge, uproarious crowd, gathered around them under a tent, is going berserk, tossing money and flashing small denominations of currency at the girls, who are alert and trained enough in their passionate movements to snatch them from the raised and extended hands of their jiving admirers. As a cityobsessed and GDP-toasting India stupefies itself with the wild gyrations of that heartstopping index in Mumbai, Bihar dances itself crazily into weariness on the side of collapsing roads in the state. If Mumbai is the yardstick of growth, then India has to collectively pull Bihar out of its bone-tired fatigue and make it energetically dance to a different tune.