A village celebration was underway in Lohagara village of Kishanganj district in Bihar. Under a tent, tables and chairs had been laid out. Mutton biryani was being stirred in large pots. A band-baaja group was belting away.
I stopped by to talk to people, raising my volume to be heard over the music of the band.
People assumed I was from the government and had come to carry out a survey. I explained that I was a journalist from Delhi and I had come to find out what people were thinking about the sort of government they wanted to elect.
"You mean the Lok Sabha election?" asked an old man.
"Don't tell me who you are voting for, but tell me about the issues on which you will vote."
A young man said, "What are the issues? We'll give it to the Congress."
"Whichever government is going to come will come, but there is no presence of the BJP [Bharatiya Janata Party] here," added the old man.
A third man intervened. He was worried about the indiscreet manner in which his neighbours were speaking. "We don't want to say anything negative about anyone," he said. "If these people end up saying something, please correct it when you write."
"I want to write what's on people's minds. Do they think Nitishji has done any work? Are they happy with the work of Maulanaji?"
Nitish Kumar is the chief minister of Bihar and the leader of the Janata Dal (United). Maulana Asararul Haque is the current Lok Sabha MP, elected on a Congress ticket.
"Both parties are doing fine." Everyone else had fallen silent. Only the one who was diplomatic was speaking.
"Is development taking place in Kishanganj?" I asked.
"Yes, whatever development is taking place under both the parties, we are fine with it."
"You mean to say you are happy with both?"
"Yes."
"No complaints against either?"
"No, why would we complain…No one is going to feed us, only if we work would be get to eat."
This is true, but last year around this time, in the month of April, the whole village had been invited to a feast hosted by the local MLA Mohammad Tausif Alam to celebrate his wedding.
Villagers said there had never seen a celebration like that. "It was a huge feast," said one man. "Half the district had been invited." Massive tents were built, all the way from the highway to the home of the MLA inside the village. SUVs had been arranged to ferry guests as part of his baaraat to the bride's village, 25 kilometres away. But the MLA himself took a chopper.
An MLA from one of the poorest districts of the poorest state of India taking a chopper to his wedding was a story even for the national media.
But the greatest condemnation of the ostentation came from the Muslim press. The Indian Muslim Observer reported, "If an MLA who allegedly declared his moveable assets to be worth Rs 6.92 lakhs and immovable assets of worth Rs 26.01 lakhs spends an estimated Rs 1 crore in marriage within less than three years’ time after the last state assembly elections, that tells the whole story of public representatives’ corrupt conducts and illegal earning."
The paper added: "Some of the assembly constituencies with more than 60 per cent Muslim population like Bahadurganj, Kochadhaman [and] Amour have Muslim MLAs from Congress, RJD and BJP respectively, but leave aside the issues of general public welfare, none seems to bother about issues of even Muslims on whose name they beg for votes."
***
The MLA was not at home. But his supporters were welcoming.
"I want to know what is the basis on which elections are fought here," I explained to one of his aides, whose identity I promised not to disclose.
"Vikaas," he responded, with a slightly creased brow.
"Please don't lie."
There was a loud laugh. "I have come from far," I explained. "Please give me a correct picture. I won't reveal your name."
Easing up, he said, "You have to make a place in the hearts of people, whether you do development work or not. If you have made a place in their hearts, you will get their votes. People are seeking good behaviour. If any need arises, if they are in trouble, if they need to get some big or small favour…Development comes second."
"How do you make a place in people's hearts?"
"If you have come here, we would ask you to sit, we would honour you, offer you tea. You will think, this person is good. Look at how he has asked me to come in, and not asked me to wait outside. You need to make people feel like family."
"Does caste and community play a role in the election?"
"Of course, how can anyone deny that."
***
According to the 2001 census, Muslims form 70 per cent of the population of Kishanganj. Ever since 1971, when the Kishanganj constituency was carved out of Purnea, only Muslim candidates have been elected here. Some of them were outsiders to the district. Journalist MJ Akbar won in 1989, Syed Shahabuddin in 1991, Shahnawaz Hussain in 1999 and Mohammed Taslimuddin in 2004.
“In 2009, people decided to give a chance to a local leader, and they elected Maulanaji, who is an eminent Islamic scholar," said Abdul Karim, a local journalist. It helped that Maulana is a Surjapuri Muslim, a community of Muslims that is believed to be the largest in the area. The MLA Tausif Alam belongs to the same community. So does the JD(U)'s candidate for the Lok Sabha polls, Akhtarul Imam, who crossed over from the RJD two months ago.
With the Muslim votes likely to be split between Maulana and Imam, people in Kishanganj are talking about the possibility of a Hindu candidate winning for the first time. Dilip Jaiswal, the candidate of the BJP, is a member of Bihar assembly’s upper house. He is also the director of a local private medical college and is known for his generosity with the poor.
“I have done social service for 25 years,” he said, getting out of his SUV when I intercepted him on campaign trail. “If nothing, I am sure people here would have told you Dilip Jaiswal is a good man. I want to do politics of insaaniyat.”
The aide of Tausif Alam told me, “Some of our people are voting for Dilip Jaiswal. He must have done something for them, given them free treatment. Now if he’s done a favour to you, who can we stop you from voting for him?”
Development is abstract but patronage is tangible.
In places where the impersonal state does not deliver ration cards, schools and roads without the personal intervention of a political functionary, people are most likely to vote for the candidate they see as most accessible. But an accessible MP or MLA is no good if he is not powerful enough to wrest a share for his people from the higher powers. Although Sonia Gandhi laid the foundation stone of a centre of Aligarh Muslim University in Kishanganj in January, Maulana is not receiving any credit for it.
“Maulanaji is a good and honest man. But he is not fit to be a politician,” said Sinha, a veteran journalist. “He was one of only two Congress MPs elected in Bihar. The other one, Meira Kumar, became the speaker. But he could not even get himself a ministry. That too, after being the party’s only Muslim MP from the state.”
Why does it matter to people that he wasn’t a minister?
“If he had become a minister, some people from here would have got jobs in Delhi. That’s what happened at the time of Shahnawaz Hussain”, a member of the BJP who held various portfolios after he was elected to the Lok Sabha in 1999.
***
When it comes to projecting power, the Congress MLA Tausif Alam did rather well at his wedding. Even Bihar’s chief minister Nitish Kumar attended, despite the fact that Alam was from a rival party.
While the press frowned upon the extravagance on display, the villagers of the area were quite impressed with what they saw. I asked them if they thought the expenditure was unjustified. One said, “After all, he is an MLA of the whole area. How can he exclude some people from his wedding by not inviting them? He has to take everyone along…”
The only people who were unhappy perhaps were the bandwaallahs. They didn’t get a chance to play at the MLA’s wedding. He had invited DJs from Kolkata.
Click here to read all the stories Supriya Sharma has filed about her 2,500-km rail journey from Guwahati to Jammu to listen to India's conversations about the forthcoming elections -- and life.
